Global Atlanta's Dispatch to South Africa was made possible through a partnership with Ethiopian Airlines. Via its nonstop flight from Atlanta to Addis Ababa, the airline offers local business and leisure travelers convenient one-stop access to the South African cities of Johannesburg and Cape Town.
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As guests filed into a Nando’s launch party on July 18 to get their first taste of the peri-peri chicken chain in Atlanta, each pocketed a printed passport.
Stamps could be earned in a few ways: tasting an array of spicy sauces, concocting one’s own, or learning about the Creative Block program, where the restaurant sends out framed wooden squares to South African painters, then buys some of the resulting works and curates others, all for display in restaurants.
To hear the brand’s executives tell it, those small booklets might as well have been plane tickets to southern Africa.
“Our South African-ness matters to us in the way that it manifests in our values,” said Sepanta Bagherpour, chief marketing officer for North America.
Hours before any chicken was served to celebrants at Bishop Station just off 17th street, the Nando’s Atlanta team joined its more than 1,200 locations across the globe in spending 67 minutes — one for each year Nelson Mandela spent fighting for social justice — in volunteer service. Locally, that meant cooking up 237 meals for donation to PAW Kids, an after-school program.
Nando’s originated in 1987, as many foreign brands were pulling out of South Africa in protest of its segregationist apartheid system. But a new day was dawning, a sense of hope embodied in the famous quote from Mr. Mandela, a doggedly persistent activist who would eventually become the Rainbow Nation’s president: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
“That spirit of can-do South Africa, that inclusiveness, that anything-is-possible influence, baked itself into our DNA,” Mr. Bagherpour told Global Atlanta in an interview.
Like South Africa, the restaurant has always been a cultural mélange. Nando’s lore has it that Portuguese-born Fernando Duarte and South African co-founder Robert Brozen started the company after encountering an unforgettable take on grilled chicken at a Johannesburg restaurant called Chickenland, which they later acquired to start Nando’s.
They were impressed with the peri-peri seasoning, a style that emerged when Portuguese colonists in Mozambique added garlic and lemon to the indigenous African bird’s-eye chilli. The mixture still forms the base flavor for Nando’s chicken, which is marinated for 24 hours before being grilled to order over an open flame and embellished with any of four sauces. The chain’s peri-peri is sourced from a network of 1,400 farmers across four countries in southern Africa.
Even with origins linked to Portuguese traders and its corporate offices situated in London since being acquired by a British property developer in 1994, Nando’s has continued to embrace its South African heritage while expanding into 24 markets.
Its first two stores in Georgia are set to arrive at a moment when powerful players are focused on boosting the state’s business and trade relationship with South Africa.
A Dunwoody location will open Aug. 27 at the new High Street mixed-use development, to be followed shortly thereafter by a second location at The Forum in Peachtree Corners.
In March, a delegation led by U.S. Ambassador Reuben Brigety kickstarted an initiative called Atlanta Phambili (forward in Zulu) aimed at making Atlanta the focal point of the nations’ bilateral relationship.
While the countries don’t see eye to eye on much geopolitically these days, Mr. Brigety is betting that shared civil-rights heritage and business ambitions can tie them more closely together.
Mr. Bagherpour said the ambassador spoke at a recent Nando’s “homecoming” where 150 “Nandocas” from around the world traveled to South Africa to get a feel for the brand’s home. Nando’s is playing its part as a cultural ambassador, operating nearly 50 restaurants across Washington D.C. and five states: Maryland, Texas, Virginia, Illinois and now Georgia.
Why encroach on the home turf of some of the largest chains in the world, who make their living with breading instead of braai (South African barbecue)?
“We’re very aware of it,” Mr. Bagherpour said of the South’s predilection for fried chicken. “We are very respectful of the role of food, especially in a city like Atlanta. It’s more than just food; it’s more than sustenance or recreation. It’s fueled movements, so we are incredibly respectful of that, and the way we can do that is to not pretend that we are them. We bring our own heritage, our own authenticity to the table. We know that Atlantans appreciate that honesty.”
Nando’s, he said, will stick to its traditional methods of preparation for core menu elements like spatchcocked peri-peri chicken and core sides, salads and sandwiches. The company’s “red threads” stay the same, he said, no matter where Nando’s finds itself in the world.
“There is definitely a core that we do not mess with. We protect it, and around it we innovate and localize,” Mr. Bagherpour said.
That’s especially true when it comes to sides like the peri mac and cheese. Created in Texas, the dish has now has made its way across the pond to the United Kingdom. (It’s unclear whether it will make the launch menu in Atlanta.)
Either way, each Atlantan who walks into a Nando’s restaurant will be immersed in South African craftsmanship. The 68-seat interior at High Street will boast woven-rope light fixtures from Johannesburg, custom benches from Durban, lighting from Cape Town and other artisanal pieces. The indoor space will open up to a patio with capacity for 96 more guests.
“We are thrilled to finally have a home in the Atlanta area and can’t wait to welcome Nando’s newcomers and the many loyalists who have long rallied to bring the brand here,” said John Fisher, CEO of Nando’s PERi-PERi, in a news release.
Some of those loyalists, including a few hailing from the city of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, to Harare, Zimbabwe, turned out for the July 18 event.
Many diaspora members shared with Global Atlanta how they’d traveled across the U.S. to visit other Nando’s, then faced disappointment when pretender peri-peri establishments here at home failed to live up to the same standard. (One man seized the moment and took home an aluminum tray of quarter-chickens to his wife.)
For South Africans living in Atlanta, nostalgia may be part of the strategy, but Nando’s sees strong fundamentals here and a much bigger market of adventurous eaters across a wide range of demographics, Mr. Bagherpour said.
“(Atlanta)’s been in our sights for a long time.”