Nando’s, the global flame-grilled chicken chain, has placed a big bet on location intelligence to power its next wave of Asia expansion — and the early results are eye-catching. Working with Sydney-headquartered GapMaps, the brand has cut its site-planning cycles by roughly 40%, scaled to 79 locations in Malaysia, and is now lining up aggressive growth in Singapore and the wider region.
Nando’s Malaysia has been the laboratory for the brand’s data-first expansion model. The team has used GapMaps’ geospatial analytics platform to map catchment areas, model demographic overlap with existing stores, and stress-test new-site assumptions before committing capital.
That discipline has translated into scale. Malaysia now counts 79 operating Nando’s restaurants, and the country’s growth plan calls for 100 sites by 2030. Each incremental opening is being validated against demand indicators instead of gut feel — a meaningful shift for a market where real estate costs and catchment overlap can quietly erode unit-level profitability.
For franchise development teams, time is capital. Nando’s reports that the GapMaps workflow has compressed its location-planning cycles by about 40% compared with the brand’s previous, more manual approach. Faster planning means faster deployment of pipeline sites, and a shorter gap between opportunity identification and lease execution.
“GapMaps has become essential to how we think about growth,” Shane Wong Juan Shan, Manager of Property at Nando’s Malaysia, noted in the case study. The platform, he added, gives the property team a shared fact base that cuts through internal debates on where to open next.
Singapore is the next major chapter. Nando’s currently operates three restaurants in the city-state, and the brand is targeting 10 locations by 2030. Against a dense, high-rent, high-competition market, catchment-level clarity becomes non-negotiable — which is precisely the problem GapMaps is built to solve.
Expect the next Singapore tranche to lean heavily on foot-traffic modeling, demographic segmentation, and proximity analysis against competing QSR and fast-casual brands.
GapMaps combines multiple data layers — demographics, daytime population, retail spend, competitor footprints, traffic patterns and points of interest — into a single web-based workflow. For retail and F&B franchisors, the platform supports three core use cases:
The Nando’s story sits inside a broader shift in franchise development. Regional master franchisees and multi-unit developers across Asia and the MENA region are increasingly treating geospatial analytics as table stakes rather than a nice-to-have — particularly for concepts entering second and third-tier cities where intuition-based site selection becomes risky.
For VF Franchise Consulting’s network of investors and master franchise candidates, the takeaway is clear: the brands that win the next decade in Asia will be the ones that pair strong unit economics with rigorous, data-backed pipeline building.
Source: GapMaps — Nando’s Spices Up Expansion Strategy in Asia with GapMaps
