The challenge
Chaiiwala has done something remarkable on the UK high street, taking chai and Indian street food from a niche offer to a fast-growing quick service estate.
With that growth comes a new kind of challenge: the processes that work for a young, founder-led business start to strain as the estate scales.
Chaiiwala commissioned us to audit their product development process, with a clear ambition in mind: to emulate the success and ethos of leading QSR operators like McDonald’s, where menu change is disciplined, repeatable and consistently executed. The second part of the brief was just as substantial: rebuild the menu architecture and develop a programme of innovation LTOs (limited time offers) for the year ahead.
What we did
Strategic consultancy, opportunity mapping, concept development, operational audit, menu implementation and process optimisation.
How we did it
You cannot fix a process you have only seen on a slide, so we started with a full audit of the operation, the current menus and the supply chain. That meant store visits across sites of various sizes, seeing how the menu actually performs at the counter and in the kitchen, alongside key stakeholder interviews with the heads of department. The combination matters: the stores show you what happens, the stakeholders tell you why.
With the audit complete, we ran a series of workshop sessions to define where Chaiiwala wanted to play and to align the menu architecture with their growth ambitions. A menu is a strategy you can eat, and the architecture work made sure every layer of it, from everyday core to headline innovation, was pulling in the same direction.
The work concluded with the repositioning of a number of core items alongside a full LTO plan for the year ahead, giving the business a steady rhythm of news without overloading the kitchens. We then handed over to the Chaiiwala team to lead on execution, staying alongside them to optimise their sign-off process so that good ideas could move through the business faster and with fewer surprises.
We were there at the end too, attending the launch of the new menu and supporting the training of their senior operations team, because a menu only succeeds when the people serving it are set up to deliver it well.
What it delivered
A clear-eyed view of the product development process and where it needed to change, a rebuilt menu architecture aligned to growth ambitions, repositioned core items, a year-long LTO plan, and a sharper sign-off process owned by the Chaiiwala team themselves. The new menu launched with the senior operations team trained and ready.
This is what end-to-end looks like in restaurant innovation: from auditing the supply chain to standing in the room on launch day. Chaiiwala is one of the most exciting stories in UK quick service right now, built on drinks and dishes with real heritage behind them, and helping them put big-operator discipline behind that energy was a genuine privilege.
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