In an era where ‘health is wealth’ and wellness is increasingly becoming a significant form of cultural currency, the new Wagamama TV advert feels neatly positioned to tap into the zeitgeist. The 30 second spot speaks of food in almost mythical terms.
“Food, it’s really something. Really everything,” says the voiceover, adding that it should be ‘crafted, fresh, balanced, beautiful, shared, slurped’. “Because food is what we live for,” it ends somewhat grandiosely.
The dialogue is juxtaposed against an energetically edited visual tableau combining footage of chefs in the kitchen and diners eating with broader depictions of community, promoting Wagamama not just as a restaurant brand, but as a contemporary lifestyle image.
“It’s an approach that works 100%,” believes marketing guru Mark McCulloch, discussing the merits of the advert. “You want to move away from transaction and get into emotion. Wagamama has always had that. It’s like a young national treasure that has a special place in people’s hearts.”
The advert ends with Wagamama’s new tagline, ‘food is life’, which it unveiled last summer amid an overhaul of its marketing approach that aimed to ‘redefine’ the role of food in modern culture.
“Food plays such an instrumental role in our lives, it has the power to shift your day, to offer comfort or to mark a celebration,” explains Jonathan Seary, creative director for the pan-Asian group, adding that from Wagamama’s own point of view, the new advert is less about positioning it as a lifestyle brand and more about reconnecting guests.
“Rather than a hard product push, the ad leans into those core values, with the goal of keeping Wagamama more top of mind,” he says.
Tapping into lunchtime demand
Keeping the brand at the forefront of its diners’ attention has been a big strategic focus for Wagamama in the past year or so. The TV campaign follows a mini-turnaround in the group’s recent fortunes, which saw it arrest declining like-for-like sales over the first three quarters of the 2025 financial year through investments in its customer experience and value proposition.
This has been further augmented this summer through the roll out of a new menu, which The Restaurant Group-owned operator says is designed to ‘reflect changing guest habits, flavour trends and demand for greater flexibility’. It includes an evolved lunchtime offer positioned more towards office trade and the delivery market that features a range of wraps and lighter box meals.
“We’re seeing footfall around our restaurants grow as more people head back to the office, so there’s a clear opportunity to meet that returning lunchtime demand,” says Christina Connor, senior food innovation and marketing manager at Wagamama. “Our main menu is known for being generous with portion sizes, and while that’s a big part of what our guests love about Wagamama, we recognise it isn’t always what people are looking for on the lunchtime occasion.”
Wagamama has leaned into AI, using it to craft personalised email campaigns and recommend specific dishes in direct consumer campaigns to encourage loyalty
Connor says dishes have been optimised for a delivery proposition, which is a growing market for the brand. “That insight is really at the heart of our new weekday lunch strategy, building options designed specifically for the way people want to eat at lunch.”
Available only between 11am and 3pm, Monday to Friday, it marks the second update to Wagamama’s lunchtime offer in less than a year, amid a wider clamour in the sector to sweat assets during different day parts. “The battleground on lunch time meal deals has heated up in the hospitality sector to combat the threat from convenience retailers, with Wagamama being one of the key movers to do so,” says Andy Crossan, head of insight at Lumina Intelligence.
Back in September, the group launched a £12 set menu, a first for the brand, featuring a choice of some of its most popular dishes including chicken thigh teriyaki donburi, chicken and prawn yaki soba, or its tofu raisukaree, as well as a soft drink. “It’s an offer that hits the value for money cues, which are hugely topical for consumers right now,” Crossan adds.
Driving value-focused initiatives
Crossan’s mention of value is crucial. Recent data from RSM’s Consumer Outlook shows that when choosing a hospitality venue, diners are prioritising value for money, followed by food and drink quality and price. Fundamentally, what Wagamama’s lunchtime overhaul reflects is a renewed focus on value initiatives.
It’s a strategy intended to help it push back against the wider challenges of the casual dining market; a landscape where increasing operational cost pressures have been compounded by both price-sensitive consumer behaviour and reduced dining frequency. Against this backdrop, Wagamama has rightly long been seen as a successful outlier to the segment’s macro struggles, maintaining resilient sales and robust expansion plans.
But even it is not completely immune. In its most recent financial results for its last financial year, the group, which operates 165 locations in the UK alongside an international estate that encompasses 62 restaurants across 18 countries, revealed that it slipped to a 6% like-for-like (LFL) decline in dine-in volume in Q1 and Q2 before rallying into positive 2% growth in Q4.
LFL sales for the full year were down 1.7%, marginally behind the 2% decline across the wider market as measured by the CGA restaurant business tracker. The group has attributed this to the impact of investments made in resetting its value proposition, which led to a more pronounced impact on spend per head over the course of the year.
The battleground on lunch time meal deals has heated up in the hospitality sector to combat the threat from convenience retailers, with Wagamama being one of the key movers to do so
Andy Crossan
Key initiatives included a 20% discount launched with Blue Light Card and Student Beans, which accounted for 12.4% of eat-in covers in Q4 2025; the aforementioned lunch set menu; and the introduction of a group set menu option for parties of six or more. Alongside this, Wagamama also invested in its menu innovation, which led to the launch of a ‘sweet treats’ mini-dessert range, a coffee partnership with Grind, build your own donburi menu, an upgraded bao bun range, vegan katsu udon, and kids’ bento boxes.
“We made a clear, deliberate investment through 2025 to drive value for our guests and bring more volume into our restaurants,” says Rebecca McDowall, Wagamama’s finance director. “That strategy is working. Dine-in volume is up, restaurants are busier, and we’re now seeing average spend per head recover over the last couple of months as we annualise on those value initiatives.”
An enduring brand
The activities undertaken by Wagamama last year demonstrate a clearer and more concerted need by the group to respond to the changes in the market. But despite this, the brand’s durability within the casual dining segment appears to remain strong.
McCulloch describes it as being ‘continually on trend’. “They’re just ageless,” he says. “The place and the eating style never seems to go out of fashion. You go in and see a family with an eight-month-old baby and an 80-year-old granny, and they’ll all enjoying it. The design around it has changed and evolved, but the fundamentals have stayed the same.”
He points to the group’s loyalty programme, Soul Club, as being a key means of targeting and engaging with younger diners. Launched in the summer of 2024, Soul Club now contributes approximately 19% of all revenue to Wagamama and has more than 1.5 million active members, which the group says underlines its growing importance to frequency and spend.
“People across the sector are trying to work out how to bring in Gen Z without alienating the older, often core demographics, but Wagamama is able to do it on all levels,” says McCulloch.
Crossan also praises the impact of the app. Throughout 2025, Wagamama continued to build engagement through Soul Club with member exclusives such as the toffee apple bao nut, birthday gyoza rewards, and limited time offers like the festive cranberry katsu.
Wagamama has also leaned into AI, using it to craft personalised email campaigns and recommend specific dishes in direct consumer campaigns to encourage loyalty.
Food is also a crucial element. McCulloch credits the group’s global executive chef, Steve Mangleshot, for his work to continually expand the menu and repeatedly tap into pan-Asian cuisine trends including, in recent years, the rise of Korean dishes including k-dogs and bibimbap. There’s also been viral successes success as the TikTok-friendly udonara, a Japanese-Italian fusion combining udon noodles and a creamy carbonara-style sauce with king oyster mushrooms.
“Steve’s nothing short of a genius and the food is such a huge part of it,” says McCulloch.
With this, of course, comes positioning, and the notions of health and wellness underpinned through the advertising campaign. When Wagamama launched back in 1992 it laid out its philosophy as ‘from bowl to soul’ and a belief that food can do more than sate your hunger.
“That’s still the DNA,” McCulloch adds. “It’s not about food and fuel in the transactional sense; it’s about soul nourishment. That’s such a big area to play in, and with huge opportunity.”
This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in Restaurant’s sister title MCA Report.