Adding spice to life

Nando’s spicy chicken outlets are cropping up throughout Australia, but according to its managing director Norman Picker, this is just the beginning. By Andrea O’Driscoll.

IF YOU ASK Norman Picker, the Managing Director of Nando’s Australia, what has been the biggest driver of the business is, he’ll tell you that it really comes down to one thing – the product. It was his belief in the potential of the product that convinced him to join the business back in 1994, and that same belief has seen it grow from a 15-store operation in the mid ‘90s to more than 200, mostly franchised, stores today.

“The only thing that I’ve always known is that we have a great product,” explains Picker. “It’s a product that’s healthy and tasty and all that good stuff. We were years ahead of our time in the health department. We’ve always had a low fat, healthy product. That’s how I got involved; I just thought the product was outstanding.”

Nando’s first came to Australia in 1990, courtesy of some South African immigrants who had received the go ahead from the company’s South African founders, Robert Brozin and Fernando Duarte, to open up a restaurant in Tuart Hill, Western Australia. Other than the recipe for the company’s trademark Peri Peri sauce and marinade, they had next to nothing in the way of support.

“The company’s founders’ way of doing business was just to get stores open,” explains Picker. “They probably only had eight to ten stores in South Africa before they started moving around the globe. Someone went to him and said, I’m emigrating to Perth and he said ‘great, give Nando’s a go’. It was all very loose. I think he wrote the recipe for the Peri Peri sauce on the back of a cereal box.”
The Peri Peri sauce is the key to Nando’s offering. It is derived from recipes developed by the Portuguese using bird’s eye chillies that explorers had brought back from Africa. The African’s called these chillies Pili Pili and the Portuguese settlers’

mispronunciation of the name led to the term Peri Peri. Descendants of Portuguese settlers, Bozin and Duarte, used their unique Peri Peri blend to flavour several of the dishes in their Johannesburg chicken burger outlet. The reaction to them was so good they rebranded as Nando’s in 1987 and used the sauce as a marinade for traditional butterfly-grilled chickens.

But the Australian experiment proved that no matter how good your marinated chicken is, you still need good systems in place to make your business a success. “It wasn’t until the business was consolidated in 1994 that they really knuckled down and put the right systems and support measures in place,” explains Picker.

Picker, himself a South African immigrant, was a former solicitor with no experience of the hospitality industry, yet he opened a Nando’s restaurant and made it a success. “I built a store and it worked, so I got involved in building more stores and they worked, and shortly after that I took over the running of the business,” he explains.

Picker quickly realised the potential of a franchising model as a means to grow the business. “We didn’t have a lot of money, so for us it made sense to offer a good system to as many people as possible at a reasonable price,” He explains. “Providing you get franchisees who want to be involved, and are willing to invest their time and their money, it will work.”

This attitude remains at the heart of Nando’s franchisee recruitment policy. Rather than looking for individuals with experience of the hospitality industry or running a business, Picker wants people with a bit of passion and a willingness to get their hands dirty. “Honestly, just give me a guy that wants to work in his store,” he says. “These businesses work when the franchisees are committed. Our guys come to us and say we just love Nando’s – the product is great. It’s an emotional thing.”

Picker certainly brings a similar level of passion to his side of the bargain. “I have an obsession with making sure that our franchisees succeed,” he explains. “The demand for our franchises is immense and it’s because people call up existing franchisees and in the main the guys are happy, and they’re making money. We treat our franchisees as investors in the business and I think it’s important to keep the relationship as equal as possible.”