QATAR. Mondelez World Travel Retail (WTR) is celebrating a successful alliance with Qatar Duty Free (QDF) to open travel retail’s first Oreo Café in Hamad International Airport. It soft launched in November and is the first Oreo Café to open outside of the US.
As first revealed on The Moodie Davitt Report, the 116sq m Oreo Café is located in the airport’s new North Node. It offers a selection of sweet Oreo creations including Oreo-flavoured milkshakes, muffins and cheesecakes, as well as a comprehensive beverage and savoury food menu.
The café is dressed in a striking colour palette of blue, white and black. It features Oreo-themed furniture, an Oreo retail area and dynamic digital walls.
The Oreo Creations Bar is the centrepiece of the café. Here, trained chefs prepare Oreo confectionery creations live, adding an element of spectacle. The first hero product for the Oreo Creations Bar is the football-shaped Oreo Waffle, which will be rotated on a seasonal basis to keep the menu fresh.
A variety of interactive touchpoints encourage travellers to take photos and share them online using Oreo and Doha hashtags, spreading awareness and excitement for the Oreo café.
Mondelez WTR and QDF have launched an O2O marketing campaign to promote the opening. This included an in-flight video onboard Qatar Airways that ran during October 2022 which built excitement for the café’s November opening. The partners also launched an ‘on-the-trail’ visibility programme which helped drive traffic to the café.
In addition, the partners ran a social media campaign that showcased the tasty treats on the Oreo Café menu through playful visual assets. The social media campaign outperformed +506% over target, with Facebook and Instagram advertisements delivering 12.5 million impressions.
The partners are also planning to launch a TikTok campaign to target Gen Z travellers and further boost user-generated content.
On 6 March, Mondelez WTR and QDF celebrated ‘Oreo Day’ by taking over the airport with a high-profile end-to-end digital campaign that ran across 800 digital screens in the airport.
Commenting on the milestone opening, Qatar Duty Free Vice President Operations Thabet Musleh said: “Qatar Duty Free is extremely proud of this exceptional partnership that brings a world-first to the world’s leading airport, and with such a powerful global brand. The reaction from our customers has been amazing.
“With delicious, high-quality meals, channel-exclusive experiences and a dedicated pipeline of creative in-store and digital initiatives to excite travellers in the months to come, we are confident that Oreo Café Doha will cement itself as one of the flagship F&B outlets in our portfolio.”
“This is a historic moment for Mondelez in travel retail, commented Mondelez WTR Managing Director Jaya Singh. “It has always been our mission to bring exclusive experiences to the channel, to drive differentiation in the interest of conversion. This all plays towards our vision for the growth of both the confectionery category and the industry as a whole, expanding beyond traditional airport retail, the first step in what we hope to be a journey.”
“With Oreo Café Doha, we are breaking new ground as our first foray into food & beverage in the channel, leveraging one of the most powerful global snacking brands to create a tremendous branded dining experience.”
Singh concluded: “A big thank you to our friends at Qatar Duty Free, Hamad International Airport and Qatar Airways, for their invaluable partnership in realising this milestone. It is these types of partnerships, built on trust and a commitment to constant innovation, that will set the tone for the future of travel retail.” ✈
Footnote (1): The Moodie Davitt Report publishes the FAB Newsletter, which features highlights of openings, events and campaigns from around the world of airport and travel dining. Please email Kristyn@MoodieDavittReport.com to subscribe.
The company also hosts The Airport Food & Beverage (FAB) + Hospitality Conference & Awards, which will take place on 12-13 September in Bangkok, Thailand after a four-year COVID-driven absence. Notably, FAB’s remit has been extended this year to feature wider airport hospitality services, including hotels and lounges.
For all partnership, speaker, content and other enquiries please contact Jeannie Wong, The Moodie Davitt Report Asia Bureau Chief and Head of Marketing & Events at Jeannie@MoodieDavittReport.com
Footnote (2): The Moodie Davitt Report’s portfolio of titles included Confectionery Curated, published in association with Mondelez. It offers a regular selection of stories focused on the key confectionery category in travel retail and beyond.
As with all Moodie Davitt Report media, Confectionery Curated is free of charge. If you would like to be added to its mailing list (or to those for any other Moodie Davitt titles), please email Kristyn@MoodieDavittReport.com
