Trading above the noise of Borough Market.
A business-as-usual paid engine plus a set-menu Afternoon Tea launch, both accountable to covers rather than clicks.
Mallow is an elevated plant-based restaurant with sites at Borough Market and Canary Wharf, pairing seasonal cooking with two of London’s most striking locations.
The brief
Mallow came to NovaStory with a dual mandate. First: build a business-as-usual paid media engine that delivers reliable, incremental revenue month after month, not spikes. Second: launch the Mallow Afternoon Tea for the summer season, using a set-menu offer to prompt discovery of the brand among audiences who had never booked a plant-based restaurant before.
Two objectives, one discipline: every pound accountable to covers, not clicks.
The plan
The audience strategy ran on two tracks. For one-off acquisition, we built campaigns around London’s tourist demand: visitors planning their trip around where to eat, for whom a plant-based afternoon tea in Borough Market is exactly the story they came for. For the loyal base, a localised targeting strategy brought in surrounding residents and dedicated vegan diners, the guests who return monthly rather than once.
The hard part was the postcode. Borough Market is one of the most competitive dining environments in the country, with every restaurant fighting for the same attention and the same covers. That demanded a deliberately tight strategy: no broad reach plays, no vanity impressions. We focused spend exclusively on the profiles with the highest likelihood to convert, so that even in a crowded landscape, Mallow only paid to appear in front of people genuinely likely to book.
The Afternoon Tea launch gave new audiences a low-commitment way in: a set menu with a clear price and a clear occasion, built for discovery. Meta led the strategy, with creative and offers doing the work of introduction, and the plan now extends into Google Ads to capture the lower-funnel demand that top-of-funnel activity has established.
The result
A brand trading reliably above the noise of one of London’s loudest dining postcodes. Month on month since launch, paid media has returned an average 11x ROAS. Covers from paid media grew 186% within three months. And the average cost per cover sits under £2.50, discovery included.
The Afternoon Tea became the summer’s front door: new guests finding the brand through a set-menu occasion, and the localised campaigns converting discovery into a recurring customer base.
Every booking tracked to its source through CoverStory, NovaStory’s attribution platform.
Booked covers, tracked to the till.
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