Case study

The Rice Bowl

A restaurant that has been wokking since 2013 already had customers. What it did not have was a way to sell to them without paying a commission on every order. The campaign's job was not awareness. It was moving a habit, off the aggregator apps and the phone, onto ricebowl.pk.

Client: The Rice Bowl
Sector: Chinese restaurant
City: Lahore, Pakistan
Trading since: 2013
Year: 2025
Result: PKR 8M in 3 months, client reported
Output: 36 pieces

Social content system
Food art direction
Campaign copy
Launch campaign
Online ordering

Visit ricebowl.pk ↗

The Rice Bowl has been wokking in Lahore since 2013. By the time this campaign ran it had the two things a restaurant needs, a menu people came back for and a room that filled, and one thing it did not: a way to sell to those people without paying a commission on every single order.

That is the whole brief. Not awareness, not a rebrand. A migration.

What the work had to do

Give the restaurant a channel it owns. ricebowl.pk and an app on both stores.
Move an existing habit onto it. Customers already had a way to order that worked.
Keep the account worth following in between. A feed that only sells is a feed people mute.
Survive being run by the restaurant. No design team, so templates rather than one-off artwork.

The decisions

Two registers, never blended. Grey concrete and long copy for the craft. Flat saturated colour for the offers. A restaurant that only posts discounts teaches its audience to wait for the next discount.

One fixed frame. The bowl mark bottom right, #frombowltosoul bottom left, on all thirty six pieces. Everything else moves.

The price, printed. Every combo lists its items and its cost in rupees, on the card, where "DM for price" is the norm.

Thirty percent, on the owned channel only. Not a margin decision. The cost of breaking a habit once, after which the second order is free to win.

A dare instead of an instruction. "We bet you won't order online" is the only pair of posts with no offer and no link, and they are the ones aimed at everybody who scrolls past a discount.

The result

The client reports PKR 8 million in the three months after the ordering platform launched. That is their number, from their books, for the channel this work existed to fill. We ran the creative and built the launch, not the accounting, and it is stated here as what they told us rather than as an attribution we measured.

The work

Grey concrete post reading wokin' since 2013 — The opening frame. Twelve years of trading stated first, because a new website is easier to trust from a restaurant you already know.

The mark and the domain in one lockup. The URL is treated as part of the identity from the first post, not bolted on at launch.

Post reading first choice for having Chinese meals, with a star outline — The claim, made plainly. No qualifier, no asterisk.

Dark bowls of rice, noodles and entrees arranged on a wooden table — The house food frame: dark bowls, warm wood, daylight. Shot as a table rather than a plate, because the product is a shared meal.

Bowls of chowmein, fried rice and chicken entrees on a wooden surface — Same set, different spread. A repeatable frame is worth more than a perfect one when the feed needs filling every week.

A spread of Chinese dishes in dark bowls on a wooden board — Quantity as the argument. The bowls are photographed full and crowded, which is the promise the deals later make in words.

Post reading a staple of modern asian cuisine, modern dishes with traditional techniques — The positioning line. Modern dishes, traditional technique, which is the space between a street wok and a fine-dining room.

Post reading quick, easy, fresh, with copy about small batches and Wok Hei — The one long-copy post in the set, and it earns its length by naming Wok Hei. A technical word tells a food audience you know what you are doing.

Red chillies and garlic falling against a grey concrete backdrop — Ingredients shot in motion on the brand's own grey. The concrete ties the craft posts together the way the orange ties the offers.

A woman eating from a bowl with chopsticks, the word togetherness spanning behind her — One word, three tiles. The grid itself is the canvas, so the profile page rewards a visit that a single post cannot.

A man in a green shirt eating noodles with chopsticks, centre panel of the togetherness triptych — The middle panel. Real people mid-mouthful rather than models posing over untouched food.

A man in a cap eating from a bowl, right panel of the togetherness triptych — Three customers, three panels, one word. Cropped alone each still works as a post, which is what makes the trick safe to run.

Pale blue Ramzan post with lantern, crescent and a cricket illustration — Ramzan opens with an illustration, not a discount. The calendar is the campaign in a Pakistani food market, and the season is greeted before it is sold to.

Overhead styled shot of a chicken dish with sesame, sauces and chopsticks — The iftar table styled from above, props chosen in the brand's warm neutrals so the season never breaks the palette.

Beef and noodles plated dark, styled with spring onion and side dishes — Darker plating for the evening meal. The light does the seasonal work so the layout does not have to.

Red and orange post reading introducing ramzan combos — The offer register: saturated, flat, loud. Nothing subtle, because this post has one job.

A long table of friends sharing Rice Bowl dishes in the restaurant — The dine-in room, shot full. Proof of the busy table the combos are priced for.

Deal card listing deal for 2 in 2400, deal for 6 in 7200 and deal for 4 in 4800 with every included item — Every item and every price, printed. In a market where DM for price is normal, publishing the number removes a step between seeing and ordering.

Teal post with a megaphone illustration reading may we have your attention — A teaser with nothing in it. Two posts of curiosity before an announcement is cheaper than buying reach for the announcement itself.

Post reading introducing family serving over a large bowl of noodles — The payoff: family serving. The teaser and the reveal are the same template in two colours.

Yellow sunburst post reading you asked for it and it's here — Credit handed to the customer. A menu change framed as a request granted rather than a decision announced.

White bowls of noodles and rice photographed in a row on orange — White bowls on brand orange for the promotional register, against dark bowls on wood for the editorial one. Two kitchens, one restaurant.

Orange post reading value unequalled, quality unmatched, quantity unbeatable — Three claims, three words, one rhythm. Built to be read at scrolling speed.

Close crop of chilli chicken with sesame and spring onion in a white bowl — The close crop. At thumbnail size a full table becomes texture, so the feed needs frames that survive being small.

Orange post reading the official rice bowl website is live, www.ricebowl.pk, with a laptop showing the site — The launch. The URL is set as large as the headline, because the whole campaign after this point is about getting it typed.

Post reading the official rice bowl app is live with App Store and Play Store badges and a phone in hand — The app, one post later. Same template, same orange, so the two launches read as one move rather than two events.

Post reading deliciousness delivered in a tap, guess what's coming and win a bowl — The benefit stated as a gesture, not a feature. A tap is the entire pitch against a phone call.

Post showing the app between a fork and knife, reading we're only a few taps away, 30% off when you order online — The lever. Thirty percent is the price of breaking a habit, and it is offered only on the channel the restaurant owns.

Post over a dark table setting reading we bet you won't download our app — The dare. Telling someone they will not do a thing is a cheaper hook than telling them they should, and it is the only post in the set that asks for nothing.

Post reading we bet you won't order online, www.ricebowl.pk — The same dare pointed at the website. Two channels, one piece of reverse psychology, run back to back.

Diners reaching across a table of Rice Bowl dishes, overlaid with the word enjoy — A frame that sells nothing. A feed with no rest is exhausting, and the quiet posts are what make the loud ones land.

Vertical story reading 30% off when you order online beside a bowl of noodles — The offer cut to story ratio, with the type turned to run up the edge so the food keeps the middle of the screen.

Story-format photograph of three white bowls of noodles and rice — Stories get their own crops rather than a squeezed square. The grid and the story are different rooms.

Story reading our bowls got bigger beside a full bowl of noodles — A portion increase, announced like news. The one product change customers feel immediately.

Blue story reading guess the location and win a meal for 2, with an alert about a new branch opening soon — A new branch turned into a guessing game, so the announcement arrives as a comment thread rather than a billboard.

Story version of the Ramzan combos card with all three deals listed — The deal card again, rebuilt for the story ratio. Same offer, redrawn rather than rescaled.

One team, from identity to intelligence.

Brand, software, AI, and growth from a single team, not separate vendors. That is why the positioning, the copy, the site and the data model on this project agree with each other.

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