Gangnam is an innovative Korean restaurant and takeaway business. They have a fantastic product with a unique selling point, being the only Korean restaurant in Stevenage. With these fundamentals in place, Younghae Kwon and her team are well placed for success.
Korean food is typically healthier than equivalent Chinese or Indian food. Gangnam is able to offer all the convenience and flavour of Asian food, albeit with approximately half the calories.
Gangnam opened for business in 2013. The business is located away from the main thoroughfares of Stevenage Town Centre, and didn’t automatically get much passing trade or local awareness. At the time, costs exceeded revenue so action needed to be taken secure the business’s future.
We Grow Businesses offered to help Gangnam to overcome some of these early-stage challenges and accelerate business growth.
We began with a health check meeting, where we discussed a range of business best practices and analysed how well the Gangnam was performing across a range of criteria. Like many small businesses, we found that the cost side of the business was already tightly managed, but that more could be done on the revenue generating activities, more specifically marketing.
We brainstormed a range of marketing ideas. These incorporated some local market knowledge, such as where to find the kind of customers who would be mostly likely to switch to a healthier Asian food alternative.
Finally we used a weighted prioritisation matrix to consider factors like budget constraints and choose the most suitable marketing activities for Younghae and her team to undertake.
The team at Gangnam have continued to work very hard to build a reputation for delivering high-quality Korean food. They recently secured the Number 1 position on TripAdvisor, above 140 other restaurants in Stevenage. With over 500 likes on Facebook and glowing reviews across social media, the future looks bright for Gangnam.
If you haven’t already done so, we would highly recommend a visit. The image above shows their delicious vegetable dumplings!
Visit Gangnam Online: Website, Facebook and TripAdvisor.
