Overview:

Nommin Brands is a business we created in response to COVID-19 and the new normal of ordering to-go and delivery for every meal. In-person dining had plummeted, delivery was growing exponentially, and local restaurants were getting left behind quickly. Once it was clear myDallas was not going to be monetized for the foreseeable future, we created Nommin to help local restaurants reach potential customers more effectively on third-party delivery platforms. I built the brand, the website, business plan, advertising campaign and marketing materials.

Roles:

Problem

Local restaurants are branded for in-person dining, and it is difficult for potential customers to find them on third-party delivery platforms. For example, a local restaurant might be called Mike’s Diner, and they might have delicious burgers, but if someone searches for “burgers” on Uber Eats, there will be dozens of restaurants they see before coming to Mike’s Diner, meaning that there is virtually no way Mike’s Diner will win that customer over. Local restaurants face a serious SEO issue when trying to reach new customers on delivery platforms, so these restaurants are missing out on significant sales due to insufficient branding and poor discoverability.

Local restaurants are built and branded for in-person dining and face a competitive disadvantage on delivery platforms like Uber Eats. Mike's Local Kitchen might have great chicken wings but it is nearly impossible to convey that on these platforms.

Solution

The solution to this problem as we saw it was to rebrand a local restaurant into multiple different niche brands specifically designed to be found online. These types of brands are now known as ghost restaurants, virtual restaurants, virtual brands, etc. By turning Mike’s Diner into Pizza Party, Burger Town, and Sweetie’s Pies, branding these new brands in a way that both stood out from others and also fit in with what customers were looking for, and adding just a few basic popular delivery items to Mike’s Diner’s current selection, we could greatly enhance Mike’s Diner’s online presence and appeal to potential customers, increasing online sales drastically.

Turn local restaurants into multiple specialized virtual brands designed for delivery platforms. Mike's Local Kitchen becomes: Atomic Wings, Burger Town and Pizza Party.

Process

All we needed to build product-wise for Nommin was a landing page with a good sales pitch and a contact form for our potential clients to reach us. This meant designing the brand, writing the sales pitch, designing some custom animations to sell the pitch, and then putting the website together. We also ran $500 of LinkedIn ads, which were pretty successful in getting leads.

Design the Nommin brand, build the landing page and sales pitch, market and sell the concept to local restaurants and smaller chains.

Brand Design

Website

I built our landing page to get restaurant owners/managers simply interested enough to give us their contact information.

Animations

I made custom animations for the website using After Effects and exporting with Lottie to turn them into JSON files in order.

Marketing Deck

This marketing deck acted as either a second or third touch point for leads that we got from our LinkedIn Ad campaign (preferably third after a phone call). I would customize the deck to address the specific needs of each lead.

Business Proposal

I put together a business proposal deck and created an example brand for a meeting with Mad Rex, a potentially huge client. Mad Rex is a post-apocalyptic restaurant in Las Vegas that wanted to get into the ghost restaurant business. The deal ended up falling through later on, but the proposal itself was a success.

Conclusion

After a few months we had been in touch with many leads but had not been able to close a deal. We discovered that the company Ghost Kitchens, which owns and leases out ghost kitchen space in large cities across the United States, was doing the same thing we were doing, and had already reached out to many of the potential clients we were in touch with. While that alone was not a reason to give up, both my brother and I were ready to move on to something that would provide a stable income. I got great experience, though, of working with a LinkedIn advertising campaign, building a landing page designed to be sales funnel, talking with interested clients on the phone, and more.