Panda Express : Case Study

The Challenge

Defining American Chinese cuisine with bold flavors and fresh ingredients in their popular restaurants around the world, Panda Express was seeking a master franchisee for target markets of New Zealand and Australia. After exhausting networking and franchise brokers to no avail, they were considering the International Trade Administration’s Gold Key Service program. Before doing so, they wanted to make one last attempt to find qualified candidates.

 

The Solution

Panda Express asked Prospect Direct to identify existing franchisees of global brands through PD’s proprietary international master franchisee database, specifically seeking established performers that had both food service and chain operations experience. After creating a dataset of 70 companies that fit the criteria, PD delivered a focused list of 200 executives to Panda Express. They then opted to PD’s Sales Assistant™ to make email introductions and schedule meetings with candidates the following month during a visit to the region.

 

The Results

Leveraging PD’s unique way of approaching each introduction with a highly personalized and carefully sequenced email campaign that yields extremely high open and response rates from time-strapped and email-inundated executives, Panda Express was able to set up eight meetings with very qualified individuals within the organizations they’d hand-picked. These high-level meetings directly resulted in a signed master franchise agreement for the brand in New Zealand.