DMA 2026 podcast: How GYG became a staple in the crowded Singapore food scene

Since its entry into Singapore in 2013, Australian-founded brand Guzman Y Gomez (GYG) has established itself as a dominant player in Singapore’s crowded food scene.

That’s partly because of the company sticking to its clear differentiation ethos of clean, healthy food.  Global principles aside, GYG’s growth in the country also comes down to its localisation efforts. 

Speaking on Marketing Connected's podcast hosted in partnership with Analytic Partners', Adora Chou, CMO of GYG Singapore shares insights on how the restaurant chain has made Singapore market its playground for experimentation and localisation.  

Catch the full interview here: 

Nikki Taylor: GYG is an Australian brand, yes, but some of your biggest successes have been right here and very Singaporean. How do you localise a global brand without losing what made it distinctive in the first place?

Chou:

Localisation should flex the platform, not replace it.

Our promise is non-negotiable. The plate is negotiable. For GYG, the promise is clean. Clean is the new healthy. Everything is made fresh in the restaurant, and that's something that is non-negotiable as a brand. 

And that's where we will not bend or compromise. We've had to turn down many big brands who want to provide and supply for us simply because they don't fit the clean motto or guidelines that we have. Even though their pricing would come in at a much lower level, we still had to say we still had to say no. 

Our avocados, our tomatoes are still flown every day from Australia [...], and we use the same avocados and tomatoes as GYG in Australia. So, it's always consistent.

Then we talk about localisation. To your point, the plate is where Singapore has a say, and we get to play. 

Singaporeans love their local food. And as a brand, they expect you to know that they love local flavours. Therefore, we've brought in flavors such as chicken rendang and laksa baramundi. We've also done butter chicken, and that's because Singapore loves it, and Singapore requested for it.

That's the localisation coming to play.

Taylor: You don't have a media budget as big as a lot of your competitors. How do you decide where every dollar goes, and what have you learnt about radio, digital, out of home, simply being there at the right moment?

Chou: I don't buy reach. I can start with that.

I don't buy reach because we don't have that kind of budget. I buy moments.

My whole media philosophy is really day parting. For example, who wants to eat late night nacho fries under the 2 o'clock sun and seeing that off a digital screen? Nobody would want to do that. Nobody would start thinking about cravings at that point in time.

Whereas if we look at day part strategies, we actually would be able to understand where our customers are at, and we will be able to target specific spaces and specific screens, specific out of homes, and specific channels.

Taylor: We definitely see, at Analytic Partners, the channel synergy play out. When you have more than one channel, even three, the ROI lift is there. Take paid search for example - much of it is close to the point of sales. A lot of the time, 30% of that is coming from other channels as well. 

You made a call recently to turn off delivery, and I feel like that would have been a difficult conversation because you would have been leaving money on the table. Commercially, how did you approach that?

Chou: Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, at GYG right now, we've been very blessed. We're on this massive sales trajectory, which is a lovely problem until you're actually in the restaurant on a Saturday at 7pm and you realise, that you can't cope with all the orders. 

We prepare all our orders fresh. Guac is made fresh in the restaurants. Chicken is all on the grill, laid out piece by piece, and we temp every piece. There are stringent processes in the way we prepare our food.

When we've got a whole bunch of orders that are waiting to be picked up, we definitely do not have that real estate and that kind of space.

And therefore, it is very irresponsible for us as a brand to be able to commit to a guest by accepting your order on delivery, but not being able to give you 100% of your order. 

Because whilst we might have your order ready, there are other external factors that we can't control. For instance, how late a rider comes, or whether or not your order gets dropped off first.

So, we made a call, especially over peak periods, that hey, let's turn delivery off. We manage our in-restaurant guest experience, and we're also measuring that, and we're seeing a lot of growth in that aspect. 

Taylor: You’re absolutely right, that it's about the customer experience. We know from our data that marketing actually only contributes about anywhere from 5% to 15% of the business outcomes, which is not nothing.

But ultimately all those other factors, like you said, operations, customer experience, price, delivery drivers — those are uncontrollable factors that are outside of our control. So, you have to factor that all in when you're looking at how am I going to make this work? What's the best use of my money? Should I be turning something off and putting it somewhere else? So I think that's really great advice for everybody.

Also tune in to the full conversation on Spotify:

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This article is done in collaboration with Analytic Partners.