Why Burger & Sauce continues to bet big on its business

The brand recently went all in on a huge marketing campaign in the Midlands.

Founder of Burger & Sauce, Saad Masood, admitted that when he first started the business in 2020  it was a huge gamble as it was a ‘crazy time to start a new business’.

However, Saad said he figured, if the business does well during a challenging time, it would also do a hundred times better when the market eventually settles.

The gamble paid out for Saad as during the first few months of the year, despite the cost of living crunches, Burger & Sauce’s sales grew by 20%.

“I chose burgers as they are the most popular fast-food worldwide but wanted to do them well using fresh patties, all hand cooked to order.  It worked.  In fact, we were blown away by how successful our first few restaurants were. It now means we can offer the concept as a franchise,” Saad told QSR Media in an exclusive interview.

March Madness

The success of Burger & Sauce in its initial years made Saad more confident. To support the growth of the burger brand and achieve his dream of being a household name for burgers, Saad introduced a March Madness campaign, targeting existing customers to reward them for their loyalty and to entice new ones to try their burgers.

“We’ve introduced a special ‘mad March’ offer, so it’s just £4 per original chicken, beef or veggie burger when purchased in-store, Monday to Friday.  This is being promoted on billboards on the M6 plus digital screens in the Bull Ring shopping centre, a digital promotion at the Derbion shopping centre in Derby, plus marketing boards in West Bromwich and on the A38 expressway into Birmingham city.  We will also begin a further local push using advertising space on buses around our restaurants soon too,” Saad explained.

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Saad said he hopes not just to promote Burger & Sauce with the new campaign, but to help customers affected by the cost of living crisis.

“We wanted to reward our loyal customers and get even more people to try out our tasty, fresh burgers, so we’ve fixed our prices for the Month of March across all our restaurants,” Saad said.

Increased sales will be a measurement of the success of the campaign, however, for Saad, it runs deeper than that.

“We are rewarding our customers so if they think of fresh, fast burgers they think of Burger & Sauce.  In addition, we want new people to come and try our fresh burgers made to order to grow our customer base further.  We believe they will try them, like them and keep coming back for more.  The promotion is also highly visible which will help with our new franchisee recruitment too,” Saad said.

To enable customers to enjoy their burgers without incurring additional costs, Saad said they maintain strong relationships with their suppliers. Because of this, the fast-food burger brand remains unaffected by the recent vegetable shortages in the UK.

“Where we are seeing challenges, like all QSR businesses are in rising costs for things like electricity. There is no doubt it costs more to run a business now than it did a few years ago.  However, we manage our expenditure carefully and all food is made to order so we minimise wastage which helps,” Saad said.

Innovations and future plans

With the marketing campaign, Burger & Sauce plans to expand across the Midlands first, with Bradford or Sheffield as key targets for the fast food brand.

Saad said they are still sticking to opening more branches and becoming a household name in the UK and expansion outside of the market is currently not one of their goals.

As for new menu items, Saad said his wife, Zenarahim, likes to get creative in the kitchen. In fact, their latest innovation, the Lemon Pepper Wings, was a result of such creativity after working on some new flavours to enhance chicken wings and came up with an all-butter glaze with lemon and fresh parsley.  

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“We felt this superb combination would cater to our customers looking for an extra side to accompany one of our fresh burgers. We trialled the wings first and we sold 1,200 portions being sold in one weekend alone! They’ve now earned a permanent place on our menu,” Saad said.