Botiwalla
This spring, SOC3 had the exciting opportunity to work with Botiwalla by Chai Pani, a James Beard award winning restaurant group. Botiwalla is known for serving delicious food within a vibrant and authentic environment. Botiwalla is set to open this summer in Tenleytown, D.C., making SOC3 the perfect partner for the restaurant group.
The group already has ties to D.C., with Chai Pani at Union Market in NoMa, where SOC3 cohort members were invited to experience the restaurant’s lively atmosphere and delicious food. Using insights from their experience at Botiwalla as well as a meeting with Tina Patterson, Director of Marketing and Communication, SOC3’s eighth cohort brainstormed, created, and worked hard to produce ideas that help to tell Botiwalla’s story as it opens in Tenleytown.
This experience yielded fantastic results that SOC3 students presented to Tina and the rest of the team at the end of the semester. SOC3 is beyond grateful for this opportunity from Botiwalla to collaborate, innovate, and create ideas for such an incredible client.
Brand Development
Members: Sana Butt, Everia Benjamin, Casie Peterson, Hannah Schwartzberg, Story Goldman
Connecting College and Culture
Deliverable #1: Botiwalla College Connection Pop-ups
Botiwalla’s College Connection Pop-ups targets college students who struggle to find plans that are worth leaving campus and are easy to plan. Promotion through campus flyers and social media, pop-ups will go through major DC colleges like American University, Georgetown University, and American University. The objective is to introduce Botiwalla to college students with tasting and creating buzz. Starting in Fall of 2026, Botiwalla will be at college campuses biweekly with taste testing following the campus pop-up menu and free stickers for students to enjoy.
Deliverable #2: Botiwalla Night Market
Botiwalla’s Night Market positions Botiwalla as a culturally rich and experiential brand by bringing its roots and flavors to life through a community event in Upton Place and City Ridge. This quarterly event targets college students who love trying new cuisines and actively seek out unique experiences through social media. Through a website, college students and wider audiences are able to have quick, easy access to what events are coming up they can attend. The larger community atmosphere will increase foot traffic through the neighborhood and encourage customers to come back for a second experience.
Deliverable #3: Booziwalla and Board Games
Booziwalla & Board Games will officially launch in Fall 2026 and will take place biweekly. This event targets college students across local DC campuses—American University, Georgetown University, and George Washington University—to enjoy a special night filled with food, fun, games, and laughter. Students will be able to sip delicious drinks and have the opportunity to create their own signature cocktail or mocktail. By submitting the Google form, they enter into the Booziwalla Drink Competition and are able to draw inspiration from classics such as Mango Lassi, Nimbu Pani, Lime Rickey, etc. This unique event is unlike any other late-night spot, as it's engaging, exciting, and creative, perfectly tapping into Botiwalla’s mind-blasting element. The competition will help drive organic promotion through Instagram stories, TikTok, and word-of-mouth.
Community Engagement
Members: AnnieGrace Heck, Becca Kriensky, Diana Daher, Gabrielle Lefkowiz, Natalie Gillum
Boti Chicken: Bringing the Botiwalla Mascot to life.
Our campaign was created to bring food enthusiasts to the upcoming Tenleytown Botiwalla Location. We centered our tactics around Botiwalla’s chicken logo, which we named Boti. Giving Boti a fun, creative persona will create brand recognition. Interacting with Boti can build community with the DC foodie scene, giving people the opportunity to connect with a shared love of food and culture.
Deliverable #1: Boti’s Trail.
Boti’s Trail is an interactive street-to-mobile screen storytelling campaign that seeks to generate buzz ahead of Botiwalla’s DC opening. We aim to capitalize on Chai Pani's loyal customers by introducing Boti to Union Market. We will do this with a mural painted in Union Market with a QR code to scan. The QR will take the user to a website, which will display a map from Chai Pani to Botiwalla and a countdown. Stickers with the QR code will be strategically placed on public transportation between restaurants to direct them to Botiwalla. We created this website with the message “If you see Boti, something delicious is on the way.” We also developed AI images of what the mural and stickers would look like.
Deliverable #3: Boti App
We created an app for Botiwalla, where feed, fun, and food collide. This is not just your average restaurant app, although it does include mobile ordering options. This app includes the “Post Your Plate” social platform feature, where you can post photos of your meal for others to like, comment, and share. There is also the “Boti Run” feature, which is a game that includes a chicken avatar and allows customers to unlock secret menu items with each level up. Using AI, our team has created detailed images of what the app would look like.
RIO
Members: Kyndra Kelley, Sara Carney, Ella Shepherd, Rebecca Balayla
Boti Chicken: Bringing the Botiwalla Mascot to life.
Around half of Tenleytown residents are families, according to the American Community Survey, so our group chose to focus on families as a target audience. Our objectives were to generate repeat family customers, elevate Botiwalla as a premium fast casual dining destination, and establish strong relationships with three to five neighboring schools, all within six months of Botiwalla’s opening. Our deliverable was “Making Room at the Table,” a multimedia campaign that targets family customers. For Botiwalla, being “family-friendly” isn’t just an operational objective; it’s emotional hospitality at a high level. Botiwalla’s ability to tap into the family market will create roots for the business to be a permanent fixture in the community.
Deliverable 1: BotiBox
Not a takeout box: an at-home dining experience. This box features hot and ready Botiwalla dishes perfect for elevating busy families’ dinner parties. BotiBox allows the customer not only to enjoy Boti’s unique food but also brings them onto the streets of India by providing cultural and culinary experiences through candles, sari-inspired table runners, and more. This product taps into the market of convenience and expanding horizons through the aesthetic box, which has been proven successful at other businesses in D.C., such as Millie’s and Little Sesame.
Deliverable #2: Our Story Social Media Campaign
Our Story was a mock-up social media campaign to invite families in the demographic of “The Wanting Williams.” The Wanting Williams are a family who would like more intimate time together and a more intentional family meal. With this campaign we positioned the Irani’s as people who are making space for that intentional family table, as they have created it in their space as well. We created a drive and mock-up posts so that the planned campaign would be plug-and-play!
Deliverable #3: Botiwalla x Sidwell Friends: Boti Bites
This was our niche tactic, a way to introduce affluent and busy families in the neighborhood, specifically the Sidwell Friends community, to Botiwalla and sustain an audience for years ahead. The event, featuring small bites provided by Botiwalla, student-run booths featuring games and other Indian cultural experiences, and live Bollywood music, sought to engage a school with notoriety, passion for good food, and engaged in cultural events.
Creative Strategists
Members: Noah Heffernan, Sophie Spanjaard, Lauren Guajardo, Thomas Weaverling
Transform Tenleytown
Our focus is to rebrand Tenleytown from a boring and forgettable area in D.C. to an exciting restaurant spot for residents to not only have a good meal but to have a great experience. From our field research at Chai Pani, we were enthralled by their amazing atmosphere that brought a sense of energy to Union Market and we want to bring that same sort of energy to Tenleytown through Botiwalla.
Deliverable #1: Tenleywalla Video
Our first deliverable we called the “Tenleywalla” video. This was a promotional tool meant to create buzz about Botiwalla prior to opening. We wanted to demonstrate that Tenleytown currently has a boring reputation, and Botiwalla has the power to change that. Because Tenleytown is also known for its metro and public transportation access, we decided to include that in the video. “Tenleywalla” is a combination of Tenleytown and Botiwalla, demonstrating a marriage of a wonderful place to eat, and a blank canvas of a town where it will reside.
Video Link: Tenleywalla Video
Deliverable #2: Botibus
Our second deliverable was called #botibus, in which Botiwalla would partner with WMATA to create a metro advertisement that would have a Bollywood inspired bus. There is a bus route that reaches City Ridge, where Botiwalla will be, so the bus will take people to Botiwalla (hence BotiBus). #botibus would be used to help increase brand engagement on social media, which will help Tenley residents to become curious about the bus and post on social media. Inside the bus there would be a QR code that a bus rider could scan, which would take them to the Botiwalla menu on the Botiwalla website. Overall, this deliverable would be a transportation advertisement that would not only promote Botiwalla in public but also online, increasing its brand awareness and bringing more people to its Instagram page and restaurant.
Deliverable #3: Botiwalla Main Street
For our third deliverable, we came up with “Botiwalla Main Street.” This is an event series that would be in partnership with Tenleytown Main Street, an organization that partners with local businesses to put on events for the community such as Art All Night, the Fort Reno Concert Series, the Janney 5k, and the Bastille Celebration at Fessenden Park. We created a website to demonstrate how these events would look for Botiwalla. We proposed that Botiwalla could join Tenleytown Main Street with the four aforementioned events and we also proposed four original Botiwalla events: a Bhangra competition, a Holi celebration, a Diwali festival, and an Indian Wedding themed night. This event series would serve as a way for Botiwalla to integrate into Tenleytown and remain a part of the community for years to come while making Tenleytown an exciting and vibrant area.
Website Link: Botiwalla Main Street
Testimonial
“SOC3 jumped into launching our 5th Botiwalla in Tenleytown before the doors were even open, and without getting the restaurant experience. And honestly? Didn’t matter one bit.
They came in sharp, curious, and full of ideas that were both wildly creative and deeply grounded in smart strategy: thoughtful, measurable, action-driven, and built to make an impact. They brought us fresh, research-backed insights about the neighborhood and the people we aim to attract. Insights we didn’t have before, paired with a stream of ideas we’re genuinely excited to bring to life (an Indian matchmaking night? Come on. So good.).
We’ve been around the marketing block more than a few times, working with big-name agencies on big-name brands. What did these students deliver? If they were an agency, we’d hire them in a heartbeat.”
-Tina Patterson, Director of Marketing & Communications
