Now a ubiquitous sight in 35 countries across the world, the Nando’s story began hundreds of years ago, with Portuguese explorers setting sail for the East in search of adventure and the legendary spice route. It was in Africa they discovered the now legendary PERi-PERi, or African Bird’s Eye Chilli, forming the basis hundreds of years later of Nando’s extensive product range and leading to its worldwide presence via restaurants, grocery ranges and these notoriously addictive sauces.
Nando’s as it stands today was founded in 1987 in the Johannesburg mining suburb of Rosettenville. The idea behind this gastronomic heavyweight was conjured up by two colleagues, Fernando Duarteand Robert Brozin when the former, a Portuguese-born audio engineer, took his entrepreneur friend Brozin for a meal at Portuguese takeaway Chickenland. The purpose behind the visit was primarily for Brozin to try the peri peri-cooked chicken on offer there, and it had the desired effect. The chilli sauce, originating in Mozambique, was inspirational enough to convince the duo to purchase the restaurant for around R354,000 and lend it its now inescapable name, a truncated version of Duarte’s own.
This single original restaurant was quickly added to and after two years had been joined by a further three in Johannesburg, as well as one in Portugal. Today, Nando’s boasts over 1000 branches in 35 countries the world over, employing over 30,000 people in the process. It has been a meteoric rise, with Advertising Age magazine naming Nando’s as one of the world’s top 30 hottest marketing brands in 2010, while eDigitalResearch last year crowned it the most engaging food brand on Twitter in the UK. Nando’s is widely considered to be South Africa’s most successful food franchise, and it occupies the sixth spot in the league of fast food popularity in its home country, only behind such giants of the game as KFC, Steers and Wimpy.
The Nando’s legacy is of course based primarily around its variations of sauces crafted with peri peri, or African Bird’s Eye Chilli, a small member of the Capsicumgenus which grows in such countries as Angola, Uganda, Malawi, South Africa, Ghana, as well as the tropical forests of South Sudan and the highlands of Ethiopia. Derived from the Swahili word for ‘pepper pepper’, the sauce, Portuguese in origin, is traditionally made from a combination of crushed chillies, citrus peel, onion, pepper, salt, lemon juice, bay leaves, paprika, pimiento, basil, oregano and tarragon. Peri peri is at the very heart of whatNando’s does, as well as the cornerstone of its restaurants worldwide, and such is its enduring popularity that Nando’s sauces and products still follow theunique recipeof the first ever peri peri sauce dreamed up by Nando’s forefathers, way back in the 15th century.
Nando’s own peri-peri is uniquely African, and this is largely down to the ‘terroir’in which it is grown. Loosely meaning soil, only the terroir of south-east Africa can produce the PERi-PERi native to this particular part of the world. The effect of the terroir is considerable, and means that an African Bird’s Eye Chilli seed planted in, say, South America, would have a completely different taste to those used by Nando’s, due simply to the vast difference interroirs at the two locations. The company strives for the height of quality in its PERi-PERi sauces, keeping them free from artificial preservatives andcolourantsand ensuring that they are free of both added MSG and Gluten. So passionate is Nando’s about PERi-PERi that it is the world’s biggest consumer of the Bird’s Eye Chilli, and as a result sources all its chillies in an ethical, sustainable manner, to ensure its continued availability.
It is for this signature peri-peri marinated chicken that Nando’s Afro-Portuguese-themed, quick-service restaurants have come to be known. Peter Backman, managing director at Horizons, a London-based food service consultancy, spoke of Nando’s continuing universal appeal. “Nando’s has done really well because the whole concept is based around a very simple product which everyone understands,”he explained. “They deliver this product imaginatively, with great fun and at a very good price.”The ‘fast casual’approach to restaurantdining, of which Nando’s is perhaps the leading example, is one of the fastest growing sectors in the food industry. It tends to be based around briefer menus and offer a more healthy selection of food, which more often than not can beseen being freshly prepared on the premises. Positioned on the scale between fast-food and causal dining, it is a concept whereby consumers can be confident of receiving a higher quality of food, with fewer frozen or processed ingredients than its less expensive counterparts.
When the first UK branches of Nando’s opened in 1992, the business did not enjoy immediately the success it has come to know today. Its initial foray was based largely around the South African formula of takeaway food, an area of the market saturated to the extent that it struggled to have any impact on London diners. Nando’s Chairman Dick Enthoven thus put his son Robert in charge of remedying the faltering restaurants, in Ealing and Earl’s Court, and his shifting the emphasis from takeaways to what is known as a ‘mixed service’modelproved a masterstroke.This is the familiar Nando’s formula we still see in the present, whereby customers are allocated a table, order at a counter and collect their own cutlery before the food is brought to the table by servers.
It was Robert Enthoven too whohad the idea of instilling individuality in the design and decor of each outlet, in order to avoid the uniformity commonly associated with such a chain. This has all combined to provide a highly successful formula, with the number of Nando’s branches in the UK rising from 29 in 2011 to 114 in the space of just four years. The 300th was opened in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, in 2013. Also largely responsible for this success, according toHorizons’Backman, is location – it is rare to find a busy street or shopping centre in the country withouta Nando’s.“They’ve become the anchor site for new developments,”he said. “Nando’s is the must-have brand to be in there.”
Dick Enthoven had a significant influence in catalysing the business in its initial stages, giving Brozin and ‘Nando’Duartea loan toallow expansion of their chain of chicken restaurants in the early 1990s. The son of an insurance magnate, he today owns more than 320 Nando’s outlets in the U.K. It is principally for the Enthovens’involvement that the company believes that, “at its heart Nando’s is a private family business,”according toa Nando’s U.K. spokeswoman.“The principal backers in Nando’s, shortly after its founding, are the Enthoven family who have provided private capital and significant business know-how to grow the business in South Africa and globally.”Enthoven shares ownership of Nando’s international businesses, comprising acombination of company-owned and franchised restaurants, with Duarte and Brozin. While not involved in Nando’s day-to-day running, his influence is reflected in the restaurants’decor,as he has hired a curator to build Nando’svery own art collection.Altogether, the U.K. restaurants showcase 5,000 pieces of South African art, with Enthoven explaining, “I never buy anything with the view of selling it or to invest in it,”in a 2010 interview with Johannesburg-based newspaper Business Day. “I buy it because I enjoy it, because it is important to have it.”
Chicken remains the strongest of all the fast-food categories in South Africa, and to reflect this Euromonitor International research remarks that itsvalue is currently in the region ofR11.43billion.The Nando’s brand,universally recognised as one of South Africa’s most famous exports andenjoying a presence in 30 countries worldwide,isnow set to embark on a major revamp and relocation programme in its South African branches, as it adds more outlets to the300-plus it already holds locally.As its primary banker, Nedbank recently granted a R320m borrowing facility to Nando’s, whose Southern Africa CEO Geoff Whyte explained that, “in South Africa, we’re opening around 20 (new stores) a year and we have a major relocation and revamp programme that will add larger, more beautiful stores.”Nando’s international restaurantstend to offer very similar menu items across the board, although they are larger, with two thirds of these franchised and the rest company owned. In the rest of Africa Nando’s has operations in Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia, and Whyte went on to give an idea of the extent of the progress continually being made in its international footprint. ”We have done very well in the UK,”he stated,“we have more chains there than in SA. Also,we’re approaching 300 stores in Australia while in the US, we just expanded into Chicago.”
Its unique style and identity remain at the forefront of what Nando’s does, and this is to be reflected even more prominently moving forward in what is something of an unprecedented move for a homegrown brand.It is seeking to give its backing to local design, initiating a programme to include South African furniture and products in its restaurants across the globe. With some of these as far afield as the US, Australia and Dubai, it could have huge implications for the entire design and furniture production industries in South Africa. Nando’s CEO Geoff Whyte added: “Our overseas teams have been blown away by the quality of work South Africans are manufacturing. Hopefully this creates an international opportunity for them.”Founder Robbie Brozin summed up how this collaboration between the parties will move Nando’s into a new era: “This design initiative is a culmination of nearly 28 years of building a brand that stands for the best that Africa can offer. It moves us into another era, where we can take designers, manufacturers, artists and those whose creative and intellectual capital express this common vision of ours, on a most exciting adventure.”