Marketing Bites: How Panda Express crafts an authentic Lunar New Year campaignMarketing Bites: How Panda Express crafts an authentic Lunar New Year campaign

Each May, the marketing team at Panda Express confronts a challenge and an opportunity:

How will the country’s largest Asian dining chain observe Lunar New Year?

The Rosemead, California-based fast casual then spends more than half a year crafting its campaign around the 15-day celebration that begins with the year’s first new moon. 

This year, the celebration recognizing the Year of the Snake begins today, and Panda’s observation of the annual event features some new offerings, including an outreach to homesick college students.

“Our celebration of Lunar New Year is not a marketing moment,” said Fabiola del Rio, VP of integrated marketing for Panda Express. “It’s sort of woven into our organization’s DNA as the largest Asian dining concept in the U.S. We feel we have a unique opportunity, actually a responsibility, to cultural authenticity when it comes to Lunar New Year.”

Founded in 1983 by Andrew and Peggy Cherng, Panda Express launched its first Lunar New Year campaign in 2008.

Central to that strategy has been Panda’s elementary school curriculum, “Let’s Explore!: Lunar New Year,” which offers free classroom activities and some basic instruction on Chinese words and phrases. 

When del Rio began at Panda Express eight years ago, a couple thousand students experienced the curriculum. This year, nearly a million students around the country will see it, she said. 

“We don’t spend much from a paid media standpoint during this Lunar New Year timeframe,” she said. “It’s really the teachers, the fan-to-fan, the teacher celebrations. We get so many social messages saying, ‘Thank you’ with pictures of students …”

She added: “The greatest form of marketing is generosity.” 

This year, for the first time, Panda Express is debuting “Lunarsgiving” dining experiences at Panda restaurants near three college campuses in Columbia, Missouri; Tempe, Arizona; and Orlando. (Mizzou is the alma mater of the Cherngs, and Arizona and Florida are big growth areas for the chain, del Rio said.) Through Feb. 12, the three restaurants will be “transformed into vibrant cultural hubs filled with festivity and excitement,” the chain said in an announcement, giving students and community members a chance to share a festive meal. 

Diners who buy a Family Meal at each location will receive a Lunarsgiving Kit with branded lanterns, red envelopes, banners, stickers, chopsticks and more. 

The creation of Lunarsgiving was spurred by a campus newspaper column written in 2023 by a then-student at Duke University, del Rio said. The student, who described himself as a child of Chinese immigrants, mourned the loss of the on-campus Panda Express, saying that when he missed his family freshman year, he would order Panda’s steamed rice and stir-fried vegetables, and call his parents. 

“Our team is constantly looking for inspiration, and we read a lot of what our guests and our fans say about Panda Express,” del Rio said. “The Duke student was really an inspiration for us this year as, ‘Hey, that’s the role that we play in people’s lives.’ And it’s something to be unapologetic about.”

Panda this year also created a two-minute film, “The Invitation,” a heartwarming look at Lunar New Year traditions that features a non-Asian boyfriend who’s introduced to his Asian girlfriend’s extended family during the celebration. 

The video has been viewed 7.7 million times on YouTube since it was posted about 10 days ago. 

“What really makes the story special is how it transforms this anxiety-filled dining table to this beautiful moment of acceptance,” she said. “And it happens through the question, ‘Have you eaten yet?’ It is incredibly meaningful in Asian culture. It’s how they say, ‘We welcome you. We care for you. You belong.’”