EXCLUSIVE: Behind the YO! rebrand
The Japanese chain discussed how they are responding to the changes in the foodservice market.
Following the recent rebrand of YO!, QSR Media spoke with Luisa Fernandez, YO!'s marketing director, about the change, and what lies ahead for the group.
QSR Media: YO! seems to be going through a lot of changes at present- why is that?
There has been a lot of change over the last few years as our new CEO, Richard Hodgson has focussed on positioning the brand to meet changing dining trends and making sure there are opportunities for the YO! brand in an evolving market. All of that work is now coming to fruition. So its not just the new look YO! branding, but its also our Tesco rollout, our new look restaurants, our range of YO! sauces and our new formats such as our grab-and-go outlets and our newly opened YO! Kitchen at Westfield London.
QSR Media: What ways are you seeing the market evolve?
Its really evolving in a few ways. From all the research we’ve been doing including speaking with our customers and staff, we’ve noticed a trend towards healthier food, and expect this to become significantly more important in the next few years. Along with that, we’ve also seen an increase in the popularity of Japanese food.
The reason we’ve branched out in the way we have, including our recent investments in Snowfox, Bento and Taiko Foods is to be best placed to benefit from this trend and raise the quality and availability of Japanese our food across the globe.
QSR Media: Is this the reason for the name change?
Not directly. We’ve looked at a lot of research over the last few years, including CGA’s brand loyalty report which showed we had the highest brand loyalty in the market, at 100%, but notwithstanding this, there was still over half the UK that hadn’t tried sushi. As a consequence, we felt that our potential market was being reduced as people could have thought that all we sold was sushi. As sushi was only 1/3 of our menu, we dropped the ‘Sushi’ from our name some time ago but have only formalised it now. We have tried to do this in a fun, unique way, hence the renaming of our Richmond store to illustrate all the different types of Japanese food we do offer.
QSR Media: What ways can we expect the YO! brand to develop in the coming years?
Our aim is to raise the quality and availability of Japanese food. With the different formats now available to us, we have a lot of flexibility in terms of matching locations to our various propositions.
QSR Media: Tell us more about YO! Kitchen?
Its our first non-belt restaurant. It’s also our first full service restaurant and designed as a sharing plate concept with dishes from all over Japan, including our first black cod dish. The site also has our first full bar. It’s quite different to our other types of outlets but retains the YO! branding, as well as some of the favourite dishes. Price wise it is similar to our other outlets.
QSR Media: How do you maintain brand consistency when YO! offers everything from a full service offering to grab and go?
As part of our re-brand, we have really focussed on our orange YO! logo and this is consistent across our estate. We have developed a new look and feel with our brand agency ZAG, using a number of Japanese printing techniques including wood prints that will be used across our offering to keep consistency.
QSR Media: How will you be getting the message out about the new YO!?
Well obviously we had the re-naming of our Richmond branch last week. We will also be doing bus ads and metro ads. I think we’re also lucky that we’ve got the Rugby World Cup in Japan starting shortly, and then the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. We expect this to raise the profile of Japan, and hence Japanese food significantly, which is great for us.
