Hospitality
Planning & Strategy
Campaign Management
Outcome Reporting
United Kingdom
2024
Mildreds is a well-established vegan restaurant group with six locations across London, known for its creative, plant-based dishes and cult-like following among local diners.
Summary
Mildreds partnered with NovaStory to drive more bookings across their London locations and extend their appeal beyond their core vegan audience. With a strong brand presence and loyal following already in place, the focus was on expanding reach and driving incremental growth through paid digital channels - all without compromising the authenticity that made the brand loved in the first place.
Challenge
Despite a well-established reputation and strong brand affinity among plant-based diners, Mildreds faced a challenge in turning awareness into action through paid media - particularly among more casual or non-vegan audiences. With growth ambitions across all locations, they needed to increase reservation volumes in a competitive hospitality market, while maintaining the distinct identity that had earned them a cult-like following.
Their goal wasn’t just more visibility - it was attracting new guests and increasing table bookings, especially during off-peak periods, without alienating their loyal base or diluting the brand’s unique positioning.
Solutions
We launched geo-targeted, conversion-led campaigns focused on driving OpenTable reservations, using a blend of social proof, location relevance, and seasonal creative to increase urgency and intent. Campaigns were designed to complement Mildreds’ organic brand presence - amplifying what already worked while introducing new, data-informed angles to reach flexitarians and food-lovers who might not typically seek vegan dining options.
To support this, we built out audience testing frameworks to explore lookalike profiles beyond their traditional customer base and applied performance tracking to clearly map spend against bookings. This helped Mildreds not only increase reservations cost-effectively, but also learn more about how to expand into new audience segments with confidence - proving that broader appeal doesn’t have to come at the cost of brand integrity.