Nando's Business Strategy

By the end of the week, Antonio Silva sat tense and frazzled at his desk, feeling not an ounce of gees, the Afrikaans word for spirit, or spark. His company, Nando’s, has adopted the term to describe the essence of its culture: to have an adventurous spirit, a can-do attitude, and a hearty appetite for life. Instead, Silva was in constant firefighting mode, trying to keep his company’s antiquated computer systems running.

Nando's is a fast-casual restaurant chain based in Johannesburg, South Africa, that specializes in a tongue-tingling dish called Peri-Peri Flame-Grilled Chicken. The secret ingredient is the fiery bird’s-eye chili pepper, called peri-peri by the Portuguese explorers who incorporated it into their cooking 200 years ago. There are 240 Nando’s restaurants in South Africa and another 360 around the world. Peri-Peri Flame-Grilled Chicken is served in 32 countries on five continents, and with it the signature Nando’s attitude that attracts Nandocas—people “with fire in their bellies, who love to laugh and eat.”

Antonio Silva is Chief Information Officer of Nando’s South Africa and is responsible for the invisible technology underpinnings of the 240 restaurants located in that country. Invisible, because Silva sees his job as providing behind-the-scenes support to make the company’s South African restaurant managers wildly successful. And wild success at Nando’s means fiery food and fabulous service, not computer proficiency.

Diverted from Guests

“Each restaurant has a computer to help the managers run their businesses, but we definitely do not want our restaurant managers sitting behind computers,” Silva says. “Customer service is the biggest differentiator for fast-casual eateries. If the manager is stuck in the back room wrestling with the computer, rather than on the floor with customers and staff, service levels of the entire staff suffer.”

When Silva came on board, the company’s technology infrastructure was aged and creaky and...