How QSR Pollo Campero Used B I Spatial and Azira to Optimize Its Site Selection

Key Insights:

Challenge:

Identifying and understanding its target customer base to guide its expansion strategy in a new and diverse market
Determining the best sites for new restaurants across 30,000 potential intersections
Understanding where customers are during key times like lunch and dinner

Solution:

Refined Customer Targeting: Utilized B I Spatial and Azira’s mobility data to identify key customer segments and map their locations by daypart, ensuring a focused and data-driven approach to expansion.
Strategic Site Selection: Applied a proprietary scoring method combining mobility data and demographic analysis to rank the top 500 U.S. intersections for corporate and franchise locations.

Results at Glance:

Data from BI Spatial and Azira is foundational to Pollo Campero’s U.S. expansion plan.
Supports their goal to open 200 locations over the next 5 years.
Validates customer profiles by identifying who they are, where they live, and key daypart locations.
Enables valuable data sharing with franchisees, marketing, and other departments.

“I can tell you from experience that the data is accurate. It points us in all the right places. And I honestly believe it gives us a strategic advantage over our competitors because it helps us prioritize our efforts, and really helps us focus in the right places.”

Allyn Taylor Director of Development and Construction at Pollo Campero

Situation

Pollo Campero, a fast-casual restaurant chain focused on Flavorful Chicken Meals, started as a small family-owned restaurant in Guatemala in 1971 and has grown to one of the largest chicken chains in the world. Pollo Campero currently has 80 restaurants in the U.S., 15 of which are franchise locations. The chain has a growth strategy to rapidly expand across the U.S. in 2022 and beyond. As a part of its growth strategy, the restaurant plans to open 10 corporate restaurants in 2022, 20 in 2023, and then ramp up to open a total of 200 locations altogether in the next five years.

Challenge

Pollo Campero’s first challenge in the U.S. was completing its customer profile and building a development strategy from that profile. With a 50-year-old, well-established brand, with most of its popularity in Central America, the company saw significant potential for expansion in the United States. However, with the vast size of the U.S. there were roughly 30,000 intersections across the country that the team scored for potential locations. The team at Pollo Campero wanted to root their growth strategy with a deep understanding of their customers and where they are. To make a recommendation, the team wanted to understand:

What is the customer profile?
Where do they reside?
Most importantly, where are they during key dayparts, specifically lunch and dinner?

Solution

To identify their key customer groups and give focus to their real estate strategy, Pollo Campero utilized B I Spatial with Azira’s mobility data and segmentation to finalize Pollo Campero’s target segments, and to then map those segments by daypart – everywhere in the U.S. Pollo Campero was able to leverage the results to prioritize and rank the top 500 U.S. intersections for both new corporate and franchise locations. To do this, Pollo Campero used a proprietary scoring method on the 30,000 prospective intersections, combining Azira’s mobility location data with regression models around demographics to identify the most promising locations. Pollo Campero shares the data with their franchisees and writes market plans in their geographies to promote their success.

The team also shares the data beyond the operations team, in particular with marketing to enable a better understanding of the customer and target segments by market.

Examples of site selection insights enabled by Azira and B I Spatial:

Results

The data that B I Spatial and Azira provides has become a foundation for Pollo Campero’s development program, informing their expansion efforts. The data has helped them:

Inform their expansion plan, with a goal to open 200 locations in the U.S. in the next 5 years
Validate their customer profiles, with a better understanding of who they are, where they live, and where they are at key day parts
Share valuable information with their franchisees and other departments including marketing