Ep# 12 | WTF is The Restaurant Game? Nikhil w/ Pooja Dhingra, Zorawar Kalra & Riyaaz Amlani

this show uh is meant solely as an exercise in education for entrepreneurs uh I think this will be incredibly useful to so many young people who want to start a restaurant this is a crash course in restauran [Music] thing okay guys ready [Music] start hi guys thank you for uh flying down to Bangalore on a Friday night on a Friday night I hope this is not the worst way to spend your Friday night we'll try and make it as fun as we can uh the the intent of this show is very much not to make it about ourselves

uh so typically you know none of our egos come into play or what we do too much it's more focused on an entrepreneur who wants to start a restaurant I think pretty much everybody wants to open one at some point in their life they've thought of it I've thought of it I've attempted it and failed a bunch of times so we'll focus on that and through the show let's try and cover all that might be needed in opening a restaurant and every point that we can cover we'll try and approach let's start with introductions uh let's start with Puja first tell us about you where do I start from from the beginning from the

beginning so I'm from Bombay I grew up there uh I started baking when I was six years old uh with my aunt and I just thought it was really beautiful simple ingredients tell us a bit about your parents as well um my parents or my dad um ran his own business which was um importing ball bearings and my mom was uh a housewife and so she used to cook and bake a lot so I used to bake with her is there a lot of money in ball bearings so what we trying to do is a euphemized way of asking was your DED wealthy um he wasn't initially he he started off uh you know he was kicked out from the family so he had to start his own business it took

him a lot of time to kind of find his ground um so we actually grew up with uh you know being very conservative and being told that you can't afford this and you can't do that but they did the best that they could for us right uh we went to a good school and then as we grew up like his business also did well and then that kind of um you know we saw him uh at least for me that was that was a great sort of thing to see what you can build from scratch and and I always knew that if I had to do anything think it would never be um a job I would always do something of myself so and things got better while you were in high school or something things got better

when I was in high school and then I was lucky enough to go um to study Hospitality in Switzerland um followed by culinary school in Paris and then there was a stop cuz then I wanted to go to Australia I didn't want to come back I just wanted to go everywhere and they said it's enough so before I went to Paris I kind of spoke to them and told them that this is my plan wait so you went to which school in Bombay B Scottish and you were there up until what what age uh 10th standard then I went to jind uh college for years and you continued baking from age six along the way along the way I was I was not a very good student but I was very loved

and I was a teacher pet cuz every Monday I was the kid who got brownies and cookies and chocolates to class so everyone loved me because of that and I just saw the joy that deserved God you know like for me that was like the start of it and back then there was not too much um that you could do with you know you couldn't be a chef at least for a girl that was unheard of what kind of brownies H what kind of brownies did it help the was 13 okay they were normal chocolate brownies um but yeah and then I actually thought I wanted to do law so I joined law school because you know being in the FNB world at that point for a girl was just like

are you really going to do this and then uh two weeks into law school I said this is not for me and I went to them and I said I want to quit and this said what would you like to do I said own a cafe someday get into Hospitality um said okay education is important so I picked Switzerland as a school mhm and uh spent four years there worth it like going to Switzerland to study oh man it was it was incredible are there any options in India at all to learn baking cooking many many now many especially baking now yes back then they want too many but do they compare with the college you went to I would say yes in fact LaVon in in Bangalore is great I mean if it existed

when I I was younger I would have gone there instead of going abroad really mhm I go to Leon almost every weekend to have avocado toast and coffee in the morning breakfast really good place okay so you went to Switzerland and then then I went to Paris cuz in Switzerland I work through different departments realized that the pastry kitchen is where the heart really is and then I came back to them and told them I want to go to Paris and my dad said it's too expensive not right now and then I convinced them I gave them a business plan and said but I want to come back and open this thing and I want to do this and this and this and they somehow

believed me how expensive is it going to a cooking school or baking School in um back then this is now 16 years back um I think the school in Paris was like 40 lakhs a year yeah and now it would be today maybe 60 75 and that's your four-year course what is it called uh the there was a diploma in uh French ptis that was in Paris and there was a degree in hospitality and international business in Switzerland okay and typically somebody who goes to a college like that and if they were to try and get a job a is it easy and B how much do they get paid so um at least for all my so the interesting statistic is that about 50 to 60 people that study go to

hospitality school don't end up in the industry um they end up doing different jobs um even pastry School actually not too many people actually have stayed back why is that it's a hard it's extremely hard um and it's tough and you know you you earn a lot more if you do like a sales job or something else right um so a lot of my uh colleagues friends um got in with the international chain so you get in with the high Hilton you you know you do programs with them travel um go to the US do a management training program and then you're with that Organization for 10 15 years like if you were to go to college in Switzerland and come back do

you get paid more here I think the degree of an International Quality one like she has will definitely give you a head up in the selection process um but I think hotels especially have a fairly regimented salary structure so if you're coming in at a certain position I don't think you're going to get significantly more just because you came out of a wonderful school like hers probably going to get paid the same but I think your career path you know the expediency at at the rate at which you'll grow could be faster but I guess that's got more to do with communication in fact when I came back it was really hard for me to find a

job the reason I also started my own thing right away and didn't work anywhere because now 14 15 years ago there weren't any Standalone restaurants there was there were literally like a couple of them and then all the hotels usually just higher from the hotel schools that uh they have so Taj will only hire for mym ETC so it was it was tough like I did a whole bunch of interviews and then I was like okay just got to do this okay so Switzerland you studied hospitality diploma which took how uh degree for four years four years and then and then Paris for a year and what did you study in Paris diploma in French ptis for 9 months and then I

worked in a chocolate shop for three months which was amazing and then you came back to India and then I came back to India in 201 10 and 20 2009 and um just saw that you know there was um it actually felt like all the hotels and restaurants kind of had the same pastry chef cuz you got like five desserts in in every where you went and there was like that blueberry cheesecake and you know and I think mocha was the only one I have to say that was differentiated thank you for the pl Puja no but I told you I made the Rohan and I made the that chocolate uh the vertigo yeah the Avalanche the Avalanche the

Avalanche Mo used had this chocolate Avalanche was great um and so I fell in love with macaroons when I was in Paris I came back saw that everything was too similar found that there was an opportunity here decided to test it out so started baking from my home kitchen um I was in every Mall every event everything and just got people to taste it and I saw that people loved it and 2009 2010 got my first small 500t kitchen started working with a team of three and then where was this uh in low parel in Bombay and slowly just you know started I had my little kiosk at Good Earth in um lower parel which was what really helped us cuz it was the the same

exact target audience and then slowly started doing caterings and parties I was teaching a lot I was teaching baking um I enjoy doing that is that a profession that pays well to teaching it does teaching at a college or like personally no personally at a studio so one didn't know what I learned in Paris Etc so I said looked at it saw it as a good opportunity and actually initially the classes paid the bills more than the pastry cuz everyone was like okay what are you going to teach us today and I would just do like week long sessions and people would fly down from all over India and come and do these classes and you found them through social media no

back then there I used to have a Blog this is like 13 years ago so Instagram didn't exist and Facebook was just like you know um I used to have a Blog and then just through press yeah very interesting and then and then I'm going to nudge you to talk a little bit because I've heard you shy and that's like an understatement she's not getting paid by the word she's not getting paid by the word yeah apparently right from the GetGo I think uh she was one of the most celebrated people in the industry nice thank you she's the boss lady of macaroons in India boss lady she's just a boss lady

are you focusing on macaroons cuz everybody's saying macaroon macaroon well that's of we know for that's but you do everything we do everything but 50% of our Revenue comes from and the cookies are damn good too yeah and we just started cookies we trying to scale and get into a longer shelf life and wait you started teaching I sorry qu a 500 square ft I'm trying to keep like a clear time get them to yeah I S teaching and then I opened a couple of stores in Bombay okay wait you had a 500 squ ft kitchen for the longest time you started teaching paid for the kitchen no in L parel commercial kitchen commercial kitchen uh started teaching

opened the first store in in Good Earth um in aanii Mills second store second kios in padium um which actually was really sweet it was a little spot there that people told carved out for you by the way yeah yeah yeah they there was it was crazy I was 23 and they called me and they're like walk in the mall and pick your spot wow yeah so I was like that happened because they tried your macaroon and they loved it so much yes yes they did and I'm still in padium now 12 years later we still have but we have star of padium I think it was it was it was just such a wonderful time like I was young I you know I was just working constantly I didn't ever get time to

look up and see what was happening I didn't appreciate all the amazing things that were happening cuz you're so like focused on what you were doing and then we opened our first Cafe um in kava in 2016 um which was 2015 2016 which was like literally a piece of my heart that was the dream that was what I really wanted to do Cafe was coffee and coffee dessert food um I had a friend from Paris who came down to do the Savory part of it I did the sweet so you started your lower paril then you started another store and then I started three four stores and then the cafe give me the year as well good Earth Palladium bandra uh

osara it was all like 2013 145 is that a good way for people to start go to like an existing Enterprise and collaborate like maybe a Good Earth for for example amazing because for home Cooks yeah because it's like a shop and Shop your customers already there you don't have to spend um anything to and at that time social media didn't exist so marketing and acquisition was so different anyway but it was great um and then the cafe was the big dream which I started in Kaba which was uh really like it was a piece of my heart and then we opened another CA a quintessential French cafe it was beautiful yeah what was it called uh love 15 Cafe love

it's the 15th around this small in Paris where I lived where my school was where the Eiffel Tower is so I loved living in Paris it was home away from home so when I moved back I wanted people to have the same feeling when they walked into our stores or ate any of our products to feel like they were transported there so okay and then you started all this started all this everything was going great raised some money to expand to scale from customers of L 15 that became friends that really wanted um to be a part of the growth Journey um and then Co happened which was quite difficult we had to shut down the cafes because it was just too challenging to keep them

going have you been able to reopen them no I think we just I just pivoted and it said I just looked at it from you know more of a business lens and said what is it that you know I really want to do and how can I achieve scale I do want to do a cafe someday again maybe like a dessert cafe or a a dessert bar uh but for now it's just focusing on how can we open in more cities how can we get uh a cookis and macarons and scale them and have them everywhere so that's what we we've been working on and personal life I'm going to focus on you for a while okay I'm like interesting a it's like we're getting insights that we would not get who exciting news to report oh my

God what's my exciting new is there a new boyfriend there is a new boyfriend what's his name I will not say it don't break the hearts of all the Master Chef viewers don't talk about it right now you didn't even cover the master Shi thing I haven't covered many things I was sitting here for six hours because I want your other guest to also tell us tell us a bit about Master Chef uh so I we're going to come back to the boyfriend I'll ask Ras by then H oh you met him what's his name how did you meet him Rya oh wow I'll tell you funny story once I applied to Rya and they rejected me yeah yeah I'm not kidding actual truth oh how how ago was this like like

not long ago is it yeah let me not mention a time frame but not long ago so you want to tell us something else about it no I will not say anything more cuz my parents will listen to this watch they know enough by now they're going to question you either way so you might as well you know yeah but I think that she doesn't want them hearing it on a podcast right yeah yeah yeah um I've also written I'm going to divert it now seven those books yeah wow amazing Master Chef and Master Chef is on right now I have a podcast called No Sugar cat which which basically I was really frustrated with everyone just saying that life is a piece of cake and life is

a cake walk and I was like it's really not it's like hard and it's tough and everyone just sees you know the the 1% of success but the backstory is quite different so I started having these conversations with people from FNB world and the new season is out soon Raz is on in this season are you an outgo P um wow this podcast is really where are we going it's a proper intergation there's a there's a lamp head you huh mom hasn't asked me so many question I think the mom has gotten in touch with him like what's going he's the vessel through which the questions are being asked I spoke to her okay I'll tell you

something I did so ah so um before coid I was a very different person um I was a person who thought everyone was was her best friend and everyone was I was close to everybody and then I actually started seeing a leadership coach uh during coid um and changed a lot of the way I I view myself the way I view life would you like to tell us more about that change yourself how um I always felt very um underconfidence and with the finance and business part of uh of low 15 um because I just I I'm a creative person um the baking is great marketing all of that is great but when it comes to finance I feel like I was never and for most girls right you're

never spoken to and told this is how you should run your finances what should mean like even all my friends now either their husbands or their fathers invest their money not too many people not many girls actually doing that themselves um and so I was always I always felt like I didn't know enough and I had like an accountant who stole a lot of money from me made me really like it it it put me through quite a bit is this something you would recommend when we went around looking at the participation of women in restaurant ownership the number is abysmally low uh which is uncanny because unlike other Industries women tend to be better Cooks

right I mean historically and culturally women have they are managers yeah yeah especially multitasking but it's it's not really at least now it's changing and we we see a lot of women um in the kitchen as well not only the pastry kitchen but also in the the hot kitchen but 15 20 years ago it was unheard of you know it wasn't it is a very like male dominated the kitchen a professional kitchen tends to be uh very like why is that though it's long hours it's tougher parents don't want their daughters to do that like it's it's a lot of cultural you know I think but it's very high stress no but can I can we please not make it about being a boy

club because it's not okay the fact remains that that it's a cultural sticky people don't want uh daughters I mean i'ms I agree I agree but the taboo is not because it's a boys club it is a boys club because somebody needs to do that but it's not because uh women tend to if they get into the hospitality business they tend to gravitate towards pastry they do marketing and HR right we are seeing some women now standing up and handling the Hot Kitchen which is great we seeing more women mixologist coming up we the best Indian mixologist was a woman so the glass ceilings are being broke but it is also a cultural uh you know a stock broker yeah Soldier and

a chef in a busy kitchen are three of the most stressful jobs in the world statistical fact so it's a high stress environment tends to be a lot of shouting a little bit of that the good thing is is changing within our system we're seeing some of our most successful restaurants even overseas being run entirely by uh a female head chef and it works beautifully there is something about the finesse that lady chefs are able to get there's something about an empathetic nature that they're about to generate a habit at an environment that is nicer softer more creative it's just natural I might be a little I might be I guess making statements based on my own

experience but I genuinely feel that this is the way this is the effect that ladies have on any environment that they have it's just the nature of the the gender I mean I think they just have this and then management a detail orientedness of our female shf is marketly superior I would say this I would I've noticed this the Finesse the beauty delicacy it's just there right what else changed you said pre-o postco yeah um the first thing my leadership coach Made Me Do Is Make a list of 10 people in my life that were most important why and why do they belong there um and that really like for me moved things around because then it's

like the these are the opinions that matter and this is really what matters everything else is noise and you can talk to 10 million people and do everything else but this is where it's at and you consciously cut out everyone else I didn't consciously cut out everyone but everyone else became not as important as as as the 10 core you know cuz then this is who is in that go I will not say that as well you get me into trouble why this is not like a put put you in trouble kind of thing see because we have never met before I feel like the fastest way for me to get to know you is ask you things you wouldn't normally talk about correct cuz then I

know you really quickly and we can cut the get to know each other time by a wide margin would you like to name that coach so if other people want sure her name is anuya Menan and she works out of Bombay so other people can reach out and take help as well we did a lot of background research and you know we know you know the basics this is not Equitable we don't know anything about you we don't know anything about you this this is like a forensic audit it I'm worried what all you know what all kind of dirt you've pulled out on us the two of us I don't have any dirt a lot Clean Slate a lot a lot okay super thank you Puja and

sorry for pushing you a little bit now you guys can over yet it's not over yet yeah so we're going to like scratch it a little bit and come back and scratch the same wound again after some time so you get a break some respite so I know Zar a little bit we met recently and hung out uh and a wonderful Cafe at a wonderful Cafe in Goa yes yeah and I know a little run by another fantastic female restaurant tour yeah nth ATA yes ATA yeah I think she's doing a great job with health food right I thought the food was great yeah you guys ordered so much food I know I just had lunch but everything looked so good I still dug in but you're on a diet or something you

barely ate I I'm am trying I'm trying my best okay but my diets I have a yo-yo life with diets you know my diets are on and off and on and off and I've figured out that what really works long run for me is simple portion control nothing is more sustainable than just limiting the amount of food that you eat and then perhaps not eat after 6 6:30 7 hard to do in our of business because I think food the love for food is the most noblest of all loves it's God's gift to mankind it literally is it's the only thing think about it that you can do three times a day every single day and never get bored there is another great thing he's given us but I don't think we

can do that three times a day yeah yeah sorry yeah food is divine food is just love and my growing up in the kind of family that I did food was the absolute centerpiece of our existence I mean my daddy was actually what got my father into it my father is carved out a niche for himself um I'm so unbelievably proud of my father I think he really brought about a Renaissance for Indian food and growing up in jigs scra's house was literally all about great food exposure from a very young age I remember I had kavar at the age of eight or nine he made me eat something as as as peculiar as anchois by hiding it in cream cheese when I was

10 literally the kind of stuff that he would do because it was his passion he lived for food in fact the country's first syndicated colum in food at The Illustrated weekly with kushan Singh was my dad's column wow started off as a journalist became a foodie became a food writer and then he did what he did put Indian food on the and where did you grow up Delhi grew up uh in Delhi uh has your was your dad like a career uh when did he start cooking like when did this become a profession for him journalism and then this yes so you know he's written many books and some of these some of these books especially prashad has become like a common stay at

catering Colleges and Schools it's it's literally used as a tool to make people learn cooking he was never a chef he was a journalist who simply had a god-given pallet and his pallet was so Sublime that he could work with the great Chefs of India and improve recipes but more than that he was a historian he devoted his life to documenting researching and then you know recording Indian food because unlike French or German or you know Japanese any any of these Cuisines are fairly well documented there are standardized recipes in India we had this Kama culture where these really good cooks

and chefs want to hide recipes so the recipes were never documented and they were all over the place you know even you have so much passion when you speak about your father has that relationship changed from when you were a kid to when you were a teenager to an adult to now what works it from a combination of fear and awe to unbelievable respect somewhere in the middle to copious amounts of Love towards the end of his life how old is z now unfortunately passed on in 2019 after a 19-year battle uh with stroke so he actually had a big Stroke by the way a lot of the viewers will think stroke is related to the heart

it's got nothing to do with the heart it's a brain infar and it left his left side paralled paralyzed in fact he was the most frequent flyer in India and overnight he became bedridden for 19 years wow and it was probably the worst week of my life I lo I I I I was 22 years old I was thrust into the wide world with all this responsibility an absolute sense of fear and ambiguity I didn't know what what's going to happen my biggest fear was is he going to live cuz I didn't know what to stroke was most of India didn't know what what a stroke was many people today and I've spent a lot of time by the way working on you know trying to spread the

knowledge of what a stroke is so that if it happens to your house in your house God forbid you're able to take action this by the way is the biggest fear for me like if somebody were to Define one fear I have in life it's probably regretting not spending time with my father when I could have and uh you know beyond a certain point it's not the same the quality of the time spent is not the same because they're not as mobile they're not able to do many of the things they might have done when they were younger what part of your current journey is his journey that you're trying to complete everything every single thing is is it the same recipes

which are continuing they found they they are the basis and the foundation of everything I've ever done whether it's modern everything related to Indian of course I have other brands everything but you do burgers and everything yeah so obviously limited but actually technically he has given me exposure to my pette he's given exposure to my pallet so technically even stuff that he did not engag and he he only did Indian food he focused purely on Indian food it was his love his personal Crusade was to put Indian food on the global pallet and he devoted 40 Years of his life to it the best way on Earth to export your culture is through your food and he did

that every morning I wake up I feel a baton is being passed on to me so actually the real goal of of our company is not to just open restaurants but literally to put Indian food on the global pallet permanently where I can't dream I mean I cannot help but dream of a day where maybe a decade from now or even earlier every top city in the world a diner or a tourist considers an Indian restaurant as one of the three dining destinations and I think Indian food is the greatest cuisine on Earth it has the deepest culinary philosophy it has a sophistication that is completely unparalleled it has a variety that is you know a simple state will have more

vegetarian food variety than entire continents that's the depth and the you know sophistication and the the sheer intellectual property that our ancestors left behind and it's up to us and it's literally our responsibility to make sure that the world recognizes it for a lot of people this relationship father son working in one business is very complicated right each is coming from a certain place of insecurity like one is trying to hold his prevalence for the lack of other word and the other is trying to create his own identity what do you think worked for you guys if it worked as a father and son working together that you

were able to manage the egos associated with a situation like this my father was a cusp between a Taurus and a Gemini although I don't think he had any Gemini in him I think he was all bull so very tough guy very demanding person and had a big ego uh he also had a short temper and maybe genetically I got some of these aspects within me as well are you like him I am in many ways I think he's the little bit I know you you sounded like you described him just now would you agree I I I genuinely think that a a son because of the awe in which he places his father

is going to be you know heavily influenced by what their father does and in some subconscious way or maybe in some generic way I don't know starts emulating them so in some ways I think it could be a subconscious reaction in some ways it could be an active uh learning like I saw him solve issues in a certain way so I think oh wait a minute as a child this is the right way to do it uh we were a fairly disciplined house in some ways I do emulate him but I think growing up because he got sick and was not as actively involved in the business as he would have liked to be it worked I have a feeling I would not have been able to work for him so I think

it's Destiny that I was able to take the reins and then I had this incredible figure behind me as my mentor and my support watching my back and the the in the inherited Goodwill that I've got from him has helped me immensely and I made no bones about it I don't think I would have had success as quickly had I not been jig scra's son I don't know man I think uh you did him proud very quickly I think he was one of the first people I remember Punjab girl was when I first met him and I said that there's something here somebody there's a bright restauran in mind behind this product because you know all the touch points beautifully covered and at that point of

time also he just started off on his mission to put Indian food back it was till I think about 200 I think maybe 2005 Indian food was everybody's guilty pleasure nobody would admit to eating Indian food they would only go to European restaurants nobody used to go out to Indian restaurants anymore it's not cool and then you came in and you changed all of that and and I think that everybody only said zor you never heard zor galra so uh you did P shot that was there was the P shot it became a rage that became a rage I remember it so you

went to NBA Boston tell us a bit about that MBA in what MBA in um Information Systems Mis and uh why did you not know up until then that you're going to do this always then probably pre 10 years so maybe when I was 11 12 I decided this is all I want to do I was in awe of my father I saw his lifestyle I saw the way you know he was given respect he was on TV by the way the first TV show in India ever was my father's show while you were your father yeah did the ego of a young teenager also want to supersede the father while you loved your father did you want to lose the name and be called zor to be honest never psychology big fan to be honest not even for a second

would I ever have I always thought how can I harness his Goodwill and how can I learn from him yeah and and I was fine him being the head but my being part of the journey to be honest even though that's not my like I would never work if I were to work for anybody in this world it would probably be only for my father I don't have a a bent of mind like Puja just said she's she said that she she doesn't see herself working for but Z I know you you're a very opinionated stronge headed person who believes in a certain thing and will fight for it so working with your dad they must have been points of

contradiction every day what what went on in your head at that point so firstly I was very clear that this is all I want to do I wanted to be in the food space I used to love hotels but I realized very soon that my passion is really for food not really for building these big structures and you know running rooms and the idea and the sole purpose of pursuing the MBA was to arm myself with the knowledge and the knowhow to be able to run a business at scale and I was always going to come back and be in the restaurant business there was simply no other way around in fact my father was responsible for building some of the most famous

restaurants bukara D I mean these are institutional restaurants also now Punjab grills Bai Masala Library Louis burer papaya so many that was the RO Club yeah thank you so much for that but those are still you know came about later but he used to own he did not used to own those and I used to think yeah what it would be great if I the most of these started Beyond him time all of these started after he was fully so Punjab girl was the first one that I started while he was still hail and Hearty in a way uh although farzy Cafe also came about that time he was already 10 years into the stroke uh but even before I got into the business he'd

built so at one point in time out of the 10 top grossing restaurants of India five were made by one man that included things like great Kebab Factory dumuk bukara sing sahab so many restaurants he'd made what worked his passion food marketing branding location like if you had to point at one factor that really worked at that time what for him he was very good at rallying the entire media around his creation and he was in that sense able to in those days when the only thing that worked there was no there was not even mobile phone was the was the newspaper and he had complete Command of the

newspaper but then I think beyond that it was the product till today the most successful restaurant in India is bukara hasn't changed its menu I love that place by the way the Dal man yeah the D and even that huge Roti they so yeah yeah it's probably like 3,000 calories a meal though right oh it could be even more don't go for dinner if you want to sleep that night right and eventually all Indians all delites just love going there for dinner it's packed it's packed for lunch too it's it's one of my favorite restaurants and uh but I would never go there for a dinner but it's a show off restaurant

and ly right that ly is like 2,000 calories by itself the only restaurant where the MD of ITC gets involved if the menu needs to change really yeah and and he never gets involved because they haven't changed it they can't even they can't even move they can't even move us like they can't move one of the toools they can't do that either it's it's highly regimented and personal lives are our I've heard I don't know if I'm right or wrong actually actually I have seen that men like yourself good-looking uh restaurant owners and bar owners are very popular with women no where have I been [Laughter]

living she's not going to know we're peers we're her peers so she's going to be careful wait are you married yes married two kids how long have you been married 200 I better not get this wrong 20063 1st July no 30th July was the marriage 31st was the reception 30th July well done well done yeah man that was so the marriage now is stronger than it's ever been and uh I don't ever talk about you I don't know how you've been able to get this out of me boss kudos to you this mild wonderful soft nature in which you ask questions is making me open up danger I would not it didn't work on her I everything to I told you what about your siblings I have one

brother M uh good relationship uh he lives in the US he's now just started opening restaurants of his own RI you had a black belt in karate no way I had a brown belt it says black on Google don't read that stuff what happened was it restaurants uh no I think somebody broke my nose yeah get half my size broke my nose yeah yeah I think my nose and my e both took a beating did you give up on it no I think it fell away uh I used to I used to play Nos and you guys you know this is not like one-on-one conversation this is all

four of us talking to each other so feel free to butt in he's a good budy of mine very good ex tell us something about him that he would not like to tell us by I'm half par so my nose is correct certain shape a certain yeah I know that that shape went away with that he is a softy at heart but he does not like to um and I mean that in a positive very positive manner he is a empathetic leader I have not seen a confrontational side of his of his yet and I think that's a very good boss to have but he's a good he's a soft leader and heart leader I'm talking about leader I'm not talking about

confrontation from outside perspective he's a successful businessman he cannot be that unless he knows how to look after his interests um so that's the one thing I think what do you think is we can cut this part out if you like sir you know if you had like because maybe somebody's watching this who can do something about it three regulations that need to change top of the pie what would you say why do I need a police permission to sell a sandwich I mean why why do I need to get a character certificate from police station to say I'm worthy of selling a glass of beer or to be able to sell what what business

does police have in my Affairs right um I could have a big Mega stor and see 10 times the volume of the amount of people comeing to restaurant why does restaurants need to have police license for example why do license it yeah police license we need a police nooc for everything that we do so if you want a food license you to go get a police clearance first first then they will give it to you you want a fire NC you to go to the police then they'll give it to you you want an excise license you need a policey then they'll give it to you I'm guessing this is like a layer which adds the cost as well cost and unnecessary right like what is the logic

you know it's easy to get a gun at home you require fewer character certificates and fewer licenses and fewer checks to get a gun at home than to get a get a liquor license or to sell a sandwich and um I think it's just absolutely unnecessary and it's so by the way just to put things in perspective the restaurant industry overall is the second highest employer of human capital in India after agriculture 10 million people directly employed is only going to grow compounded annually we're growing at around 21% which means every three and a half OD years you're doubling in size so number of people employed will double in

size so it's a very important industry what is the purpose of having of of dissuading people from entering the field that is doing a noble cause sustance you're giving food you're giving it's a necessity technically you just need three licenses right you need you need tax you need health to make sure that you're going to make sure that uh you know people are and you need safety right you need to make sure that it's fire compliant you need to make sure that it's designed in a manner which is not hazardous to the environment to the customers what other licenses would you need and why do you we even need a

license for example but yeah we still we're still grappling with 36 I think after many years of struggle I think uh U we've been able to get it from 36 to 32 wow yeah so police number one then police license after that uh so again why do you need police license why is it that um we are regulated with our timings right I mean the fact that uh why why is it again is again it's a issue like you can only serve from this time to this time and then you cannot serve after that or before that whereas is there a rule before that as well yeah yeah yeah I thought only in the night like Beyond 1:00 a.m. 2 a.m. but then I get

shut at one and open up at 2 know that doesn't work so um hotels Allowed by the way yeah Hotel allow 24hour license um the excise uh licenses again crazy uh very highly regulated very very expensive um it's it's still today restaurants are almost treated like uh a rich man's Indulgence which is to be ignored rather than the infrastructure provider that restaurants are right it's it's uh we're literally participating in place building we we are growing communities we bringing people together we're not just about food and drink but we're also about culture there's we double up as public spaces which India suffers from the lack of in a big way so

we have the added responsibility of of public spaces where people can commune with each other uh we also cultural spaces where you know I mean you can't go and perform in big halls but you know every artist every musician every spoken word artist has got the break first in a restaurant so um there are many things that restaurants bring to the table but uh unfortunately it's not seen in a favorable light right now so you have a Pary mother yes grew up in Bombay grew up born and inbred in Bombay as what is what is that like I've heard so much about par season in breeding and how the community is dying like why is that why is the community dying yeah

they just don't want to get married I think they wisened up no no I think sorry you're married I'm married two kids how long have you been married 10 years Pary girl no no no part of the problem I am part of the problem but uh we got excommunicated from we have um uh it is actually nothing to do with religion but it's more cultural so I think in the 8th century when the first boatload of pares came in and they landed near udwada in Gujarat uh they made a promise to the king then that they will never intermingle because the king said hey we don't want you you know intermingling with and there's a very famous story about how they brought

a glass full of milk and he said do you see any more space in this and uh the Pary asked some sugar and he put that in and said see we could there's still space for sweet people in your uh country and they and they made and yeah so that is the legend always go with the legend was this in the 8th Century 700 something yeah that was the first 1200 years ago yeah that's when the pares came in the zor yeah and 100 years ago that's when the iris came in the iRun so all the Irani surnames are recent immigrants and they're completely like different from the pares who've been um in India for a very long time Ed a lot of the cultures but have also not

mingled uh the way other cultures have right because again so if you marry outside your religion you're excommunicated immediately your children do not become so and that is again from your maternal side from paternal side the wife doesn't become zation but your children can become so um counterintuitive to other religions which want to propagate I think that this is again I think it's it's become more of a cultural thing and I think that um you know true uh Pary style they do keep their word so I think you know almost Thousand Years Later they're still keeping the word but a very

wealthy community an altruistic Community yes uh don't ask where they got the wealth I'm sure there's enough literature out there um altruistic how they donate they give away Al a guess in a sense that you know there's a very famous saying that you never see a Pary beggar or even a seik Begg uh because the like the siks uh the community really reaches out and you know offers a helping hand and there's lots of um charitable initiatives done by uh you know the big Pary business homes they make sure that they provide great good quality housing they they they reach out and help and make sure that they they are above poverty levels at all points

of time they take care of their own they do take care of their own they do take care of a lot of other people as well you you've seen no I mean we like to claim the parses we love them we proud of them we say you know where they were born 50 they originally I think about I've heard under 50,000 yeah something like that and today and oh wow the the the one the non EXC communicado ones even my people say is going down we're conies something called gsbs we all need to sit together and work out strategies there is an element of self-deprecation in every fire lines that you say it's kind of cool is it yeah it gives you edge I think I'm going

to increase it to seven yeah so you were a DJ at Pary weddings at Pary weddings Catholic weddings we grew I grew up in in a place called Bala in Bombay uh where we were surrounded by um a large part was a Catholic community and some of it was because of my uh you know I my mother's side I I actually I more grew up more as a Pary than than are you religious Fe not at all right are you s yes I am Puja spiritual okay zero okay so you were a DJ and this was like a part-time gay college yeah yeah enjoy you know it's to like show up with cassettes like a bag full of cassettes all rebound and kept to the song that you want because you know you there was

no CDs at that point of time it was all and you had to have mix tapes and you go with one tape recorder and another tape recorder and you to press play did you use the and it no no I could afford LPS cassettes was I could like pirate them and play whatever I wanted we used to play Cliff Richards and um shaking Stevens and Chubby Checker and it was RI seems like the original cool guy right like he must have been the popular guy in college no how many girlfriends did you have in [Music] colge I guess my fres share and a couple of other people's FES to at Le he open about

it and your father had a restaurant as well yes he did betes at church berries where it all started fromy food no uh in my berries was a restaurant started by a gentleman called Mr Berry and that's how it gets his name it's actually berries okay but uh it became berries Berry or b b e r yeah B yeah a so you grew up in Bombay went to school scho I went to school uh we talking about the restaurant now or no no child going back child this is like a movie right Ling this it gives you so much insight into the person so quickly um yeah I think um we came um there was a little bit of you know Financial strain I was very

keen on earning my own money uh at had a very early age so my father's side comes from a community which are called the koas or the aak khanis or the Isis or the prince aak Khan the followers of that so it's a certain sect amongst the sect um we as koas we have maintained a lot of our previous practices right and and I think that that's beautiful so um we have my father was a saaba Mand again you know there's not something that most Muslims do um we used to go to Shi pretty often every holy on hia we used to have a fire um that we used to burn uh during Diwali we used to do choa pujan which is um you know you come down and you kind of write uh in a very K by

the way that's very interesting the the what you wrote on the book was all about you we spoke about aakhan and we spoke about KU jino bandar and we spoke about Lakshmi and so it was this kind of a hybrid kind of a religion which which I guess um it many ways reflects what India is all about right I mean uh it's it's to to have a knowledge and to have an appreciation for uh such a diverse uh and spiritually diverse nation that we are I think U quite blessed to have that uh upbringing a lot of your restaurants I've been to I've been to mocha there's a smoke house right down the road which makes uh a great grilled chicken and uh they have some fish what is it

called that memorable one it's good good social is good slink and B is good boss Burger I haven't tried prit Cafe tell us a bit about that so prit Cafe is actually a very very special place um it's part of uh PRI theater and um it was set up uh by Shashi Kapur in uh the actor the actor in memory of his his uh father PR Raj Kapoor that's why it's called PR theater uh and now run by his children konal Kapoor and sanjana Kapoor um who literally are keeping you know the flag flying for the the the drama and the you know the plays and that kind of cultural fabric I think PR is a very important part of uh cultural fabric of Mumbai at

least M and um I think PR Cafe was first started by adman prad kaker and and made it very famous and it was this made a very famous restaurant yeah the name is really cool Papa Pancho he had one more before that I think he was running the tea although it's in the news for all the wrong reasons yeah shut down because of a rat or something he got shut down because he was being hustled but come to that later um yeah so it was this place where uh uh nasin sha you can see him on the o day om Puri uh makr Pand sitting with a pack of Four Square reading scripts screaming

and shouting emoting you know and uh every now and then a flst would come in with a flute and just start playing in a corner and a player would come and just you know do their what kind of theater is it is it like the typical it's a it's a it's a small little heartfelt little space I don't think it seats more than 300 people right um best gold coffee he Bollywood a big part of your lives in Bombay mine yes yours as well cuz he was just mentioning some actors and musicians oh no I see like a pattern in music in you which I'm going to get to like going from DJ to studying entertainment Management in

UCLA to still your bars still kind of like revolve around the music that is played there right I don't think it's about the music I mean I love music that you know everybody does who doesn't love music right it's like saying everybody loves food everybody loves music everybody likes to have a good time um some people don't huh music not as much yeah I love music so do I but I know people who verying levels of bad people love for music you don't want to hang out with them right yeah are they in your 10 no good huh so what's the connection with music nothing I wouldn't say nothing um you know I think that um restaurants are

a multi- sensory experience right and uh many times you know the takeoff point for a restaurant could be music so I would go to my Architects you know I and I would say okay this is like you know Acid Jazz what kind of place would you want to listen to acidizing and that would for me would work as a really good kind of entry point into the tonality of the restaurant it doesn't really matter it's just that the the the the tone as Z very famously always says that you feel like a conductor and he's like you know making sure that all the various Elements which it could be food it could

be the plates it could be the weight of the glass in your hand it could be uh the sights smells sounds all this goes to complete the experience that you have in if you had to pick one thing that works for slink and B is it am I pronouncing it right yes absolutely is it music location food Bombay okay I think now that we're done with the intros we'll get into beginning our podcast the food we can eat and talk okay like this very casual food is good huh yummy and the code of it all restaurants are also like a real estate space right that's what McDonald's always claimed to be how much you can monetize which area so if you can

tomorrow start monetizing Walls by displaying brands or selling stuff would you do put art would you do it of course would love to do that why aren't you doing it already we are doing in some cases for example in some of our bars some key locations for Logos are kept for some beverage companies so a Budweiser we have a link with Budweiser we put their logos up they pay us money for it I don't put cigarettes but their ITC cigarette company would take a space on your bar you can't sell it as far as I know but you can put it over there and they'll pay you like a decent amount of money so you can and then of course there are some restaurants where you can

actually buy the Crockery and the cutlery as well and art art is lying on the walls London Arts Club does I've seen that in some places London Arts Club does that you know the food you guys are eating which was your favorite dish eat one then I'll tell you why H I like the kma yeah same kma for me where's the kma from oh good so that's Kapa where's the prawn from this is from prawn I don't know not mine this is fzy Cafe yeah and the prawn is from so we eating your food good you guys are proper evil people this is good thing I got deser so I know

where it's level 10 we got a few options there too just to trick everybody sorry one sec Talk Amongst yourself giving us the taste of our own medicine we want to create a template of how to start a restaurant and the intricacies of it before that we'll answer a bunch of questions about the industry Trends what is growing what is not all of that yeah but just to come back to the question you had asked earlier right we are in the real estate space sometimes people come to us for real estate for the price of a cup of coffee right but if you see where media

is going right you're scrolling and you have exactly one second to capture somebody's attention to be a thumb stopper right and um uh Holdings you just you know out of home hings you wiing by you either e see it or you don't see it in a restaurant you're sitting for about an hour and a half you have undivided attention there is a place where actual behavior modification can happen right uh you you can you can really you know in a more sensitive way introduce products uh to customers I don't see why like one day why a restaurant can't be like what a television channel is right I mean give the food for free the advertising p

right people are doing it all over why not right especially at some point of time it could become a model we try a little bit we're doing a little few little experiments there are lots of places I think that restaurants have the capability to you know have certain influence over your behavior or you know influence you in certain way and uh it doesn't necessarily have to be on the walls it doesn't necessarily have to be Commerce but there various ways that you can have an impact uh and and actually work with other brands which which is quite cool especially when you're you know in the business of culture imagine if you're charging for

the Wi-Fi but the food is free it's like a one of those bars Tapas bars in chupito bars style bars in in Spain where you can go and there are tons of them shots and liquor oriented you pay for the drinks and the food is given for free m you could give for example a tech company could figure out to sell a service for free and give free coffee and free food is that the way forward you think for restaurants like I see in Dubai restaurants fly one way one way that's a I think socials is becoming a workplace during the day right co-working social always been a co-working space but do you think because you're using so much real estate

inventory only at a certain time of the day The Logical Way Forward would be to monetize the other times for different things yeah so I think the you're paying rent for 24 hours right yeah but you using it for basically 12 to 14 at Max you're paying salaries for the month you're able to utilize uh at Max I think 8 hours a day I think um restaurants are the final Bastion of Hope for human offline social engagement that's too much responsibility and it is it is the final Bastion of Hope because I really think the digital world is overcoming everything else and so I think the restaurants play a key role in binding families it's a huge responsibility as R

said but I think it is also we're in the business of giving happiness it's a huge responsibility because people are coming to you to celebrate life's greatest moments to you know Centenary you know a marriage proposal you know your break up date yeah break up a date night with your first love so I think I really think and I really hope and I don't have a dis openen view of the of the future of restaurants I have a very positive View uh and once we get into the math of what India can offer you'll realize that we have not even scratched the surface yet for restauran thing or delivery in India yet so you know I have a thesis for

businesses which are a place of passion like restaurant or Bollywood or like things that you consider a passion can which can also be a profession the odds of success while we trying to make this entire show for somebody who wants to start a restaurant to help them have all the details at hand and help them increase the odds of success whenever you attempting a vocation of passion more often than not the odds are stacked against you because there are many other people who are attempting it not with a monetary gain in mind because it is cool to have a restaurant uh a lot of people want to retire to a bar on the

beach I know so many of my friends who knew nothing about restaurants but attempted it because it was some child passion or dream of theirs so this is something to really bear in mind so the first thing I think we should really arrive at is across the board odds of a restaurant being successful what do you think is an accurate number 10% 20% knows this but and so is the highest morbidity rate business in the world 90% around that of restaurants failed within the first year and around 96% within 18 months and the biggest reason you won't believe is not necessarily lack of passion or getting into it for glamorous glamorous reasons

it's under capitalization people have money to build a restaurant but they don't plan for the gestation right and the gestation is what can kill you it can demotivate you it can make the quality become bad because you don't have money to pay the bills so you start compromising and unfortunately that's just the nature I think I think this is a Passion Play restaurants in general it's not a 9 to5 it's a lifestyle choice you have to get into it for the right reasons it cannot be an extension of your drawing room if that's what you're trying to do invest half the amount of money and make your drawing room

better you know I think U yeah a lot of people get in because and I used this we were talking about ball bearings earlier and a lot of the people who do get into the restaurant industry like made billions selling ball bildings but nobody knows who you are you know you open up a restaurant glamour no it's not it's not just glamour so for some it's glamour for some it's calling card for some it is a networking opportunity right for some it is a childhood cherish dream for for some it is a leg up in society and for some it is genuine passion right it's genuine there are various reasons why people do get into the

restaur so if the bo doing but what we agreeing on broadly is the odds of success for a restaurant 2-year Runway is something like 3 4% two years 4% you could say there are obviously you know outliers but in general you would say under 10% would be the number where you would not have success so unless bring a specific USB that you can bring to the table 90% you'll fail don't attempt it I think there's a secret sauce and that secret sauce is um the last thing that Raz mentioned which is Passion if you're passionate about it you'll figure it out and if but wouldn't all 100 attempting

it think they're passionate in their own I I don't think that higher percentage get into it with passion no I think few get into passion if you get into your chance again I'm not saying that you're going to 100% succeed your chances of failure reduce drastically Define passion from this lens it's the only thing you can see yourself doing it's something that you would do for free and then figure out a way to make money from it I think that's passion janun Madness uh something that doesn't let you sleep at night an itch that needs to be scratched but how long can passion also

keep you going right like I'll take my example I started this when I was 23 extremely passionate but 14 years I've had my ups and downs of this is hard work this is you know this is like awful this is great I love it I hate it so it's a it's never really like that also keeps every every day I wake up in the morning I'm like this is it why am I doing this shut last 10 years and you know and every day you walk into a restaurant you see people having a great time and you're like damn I love my job it's a constantly conflicted conscience I think eating out patterns in India uh people in India eat out on average one

time a week they spend $3 people in the US eat out on average four to five times a week in China it's twice a week but in China and us they spend a significantly higher amount of money in China the average meal is $10 in US is $20 India is $3 why do you think is is it cultural why do people go out as little is it because you have a you can have a chef at home we live in join families there is always food at home stigma wasting food advance I think that look I think that we are eating out and we're growing very very quickly we were eating out four times a month in uh I think in 200 14 when we did our first reports Z and I

think the 200 I think 19 report was the previous just before the the no even later we had come up to eight times a month and in urban area we were up to about 16 times a month but give an example Singapore eats out 52 times a month yeah right so I read that and I saw that the valuations of CH in Singapore is ridiculous they're billion dollar restaurant companies but they're not they still not Valu the same value that companies in India Val yeah if you increase the price of a dish in Smokehouse Delhi from 400 Rupees to 600 rupees you Rebrand your menu that way will people perceive you to be at a

higher price point hence higher quality and you get more footfalls no let me let me look at tell look India is a very value conscious Market it's not a price sensitive Market it's a value sensitive Market why is premiumization works so premiumization I'll tell you what premium so we we saw in Delhi took some you know Progressive steps they brought the you know the excise duty down on liquor right what we saw was that people while so the prices of the liquor went down in bars we reduced the prices follow suit passed on the benefit to the customers the customers didn't drink more of their liquor they upgraded to the next one you understand so where

they were drinking a red label they didn't say okay now you know I was I would typically have two glass two uh red labels now I will have three they said I will have black label because now it that's the same amount of money that I'm spending right so that's where I see premiumization happening that people are wanting to actually get into a better quality product or what they perceive to be a better quality product we're not getting into the merits of uh the product but yes that is where premiumization is happening that people want to be consuming better they want to be consuming uh they want to go to Brands they want to go to brands that

they trust and they go to Brands where they feel that it'll enhance the image Prestige you know or their their quality of life what segment is if RI was a young man 20 years old start what do you mean if younger man if you were starting off at 20 what would you start one one option you have one CR rupe budget what would you start a band but you denied The Music Connection somehow I've been like coming back to that right there's something in music there okay but what kind of restaurant what kind of restaurant would I start up all over again one highest ords of success not

passion uh social I would do that because for me I feel that uh in this country is the best product Market fit the that we are seeing we are extremely young uh audience we are an audience which believes in the gig economy uh in in the freelance economy people are looking for places to work from uh they are you know they're being social while they work and they working while they're being social the lines are blurring um we are looking for spaces to hang out where we can you know do some work meet people we're looking for for one or better word we're looking for accessible vworks and we're looking for accessible so houses um and I think that that's the

role that social really could set up one in one CR uh no I I could set I could put equity and uh the rest I would get in credit is it easy to get credit when you're starting a restaurant working capital I don't think so um it's like I said it's such a high failure rate business that um to go to a bank and expect them to give you you have a better chance at jumping off an aircraft and surviving then being a first time restaurant tour and going to a bank and asking for money to open a new restaurant so you partner with somebody and then you partner with somebody who has relevant experience and

then you're able to rise I think like I said I think initially it's always better to be a little careful and Frugal um don't go ahead and try and open a 5,000 ft 200 C restaurant maybe start out today with a cloud kitchen or a small Cafe why you wasting the cloud kitchen you don't have to I love I love Cloud kitchen because you're using your existing infrastructure no I'm not actually I have nobody making money business well actually I beg to differ on that but we actually talk about Cloud kitchen Cloud kit yeah so we don't use any of our existing infrastructure at all uh not even one restaurant not even a single

restaurant so yeah so exactly so you'll be surprised that we actually don't use it on purpose because at some point in time we might segregate the two businesses and as a result we cannot have that blurring of lines so we do not use ex infrastructure separate Cloud kitchens absolutely separate Cloud kitchens I see Domino's Pizza really working I see Italian food starting to work in India like it worked for garments when we sold Western garment with Western models like it did for Paige and a bunch of different companies selling a foreign product in India like a burger is working I think there's a is it growing faster than a Biryani for

example no so it's never going the consumption patterns are never going to be there but you have to understand that the competition and the number of players in that category are far more in Biryani as opposed to Burger so if you were to open a Biryani brand say in Southern India Bangalore you have great local players that are these institutions and it transitions well to tier 2 tier three it transitions well you might have to tweak the pricing don't think you can sell a 800 rupee Burger in uh are there 800 rupee burgers in Louis Burger there's one there's one it's 3% 4% of our sale so doesn't sell much but it's there the cost of good

typically on a burger like cost of producing the burger so we're running at around about 30 to 31% I would say is that fair for all kind of food you should run it about 30% the the rule of thumb says 30% but you can be lower Chinese food I've seen you can come up with slightly lower Indian food simply because the quantity of chicken and the muscle protein that you have to use typically higher in in price and then of course Italian food would be higher as well because the cheeses you have to Port perhaps uh but you're getting great Alternatives every alternative is available in India so Louis Burger boss Burger competition in a sense yes same

markets yeah Sim similar Market same price point no I think Lou is higher Lou higher would good flipin also be a part of this yeah good flipping and uh and exact no I think good flipping it would be more uh on the boss Burger price slightly lower slightly lower also I think it's higher if I were to build a burger brand there is Louie there is boss there something called Burger sing as well right yeah yeah it's very indianized Burgers IND pretty well H all of this how do I create a burger brand well you have to figure out the bun figure out the bun is that the key protein not the sace not the protein Al it's a some of its parts you cannot

obviously I'm making a simplist simplistic joke out of it you got to get the basics right I think um the again I'm getting into details the meat to bun Ratio or the vegetable Patty to bun ratio which was incredibly important if you have a little little dice or a little you know cutlet size Patty in the middle and the bun is falling all over people are not going to see value Indians are small so I think a burger brand I think he meant something else but I know I know no no no talk Burger sizes are very important right bu sies are important important okay when you get so typically

a McDonald's burger would be much smaller Burger it won't be filling much smaller Burger than what you would get at a boss burger or at a Louis Burg so Louis Burger is on its way we should try it and so the thing is that you could actually spend so if a McDonald's burger cost 120 bucks you'll actually need two to feel full whereas at at 250 bucks a Louis burger cheeseburger would be more filling comparatively and how do you decide where to open a burger joint or where to open a pser for example is there a like I'm I come from a different world right like is there a API of restaurants together where you can gather data of what is the demographic

what kind of client is buying how much are they spending is this data available this data is available with a lot of real cons real estate consultant and they charge you money for there are there are enough uh companies now uh which are uh have very detailed demographic uh breakups on each can you give us some examples just I will I will send you a link I don't know I'll tell you J J us more more focused I don't even think that data is really that up to dat or accurate I think it's been ex extrapolated from a you know finite base of information I would not like take a business decision based purely on a

document given to me by a gll I would go with in a almost in a you know oldfashioned way I would go with my gut instinct for a physical space with the cloud kitchen obviously it's it's geography is history right with the cloud kitchen geography is history you're virtual so you don't really need to care about where you are you need to be in general area so if you know this area CBD has a large demand of burgers you'd open somewhere but you don't need to be on Church Street you could be in one but how do you know CBD has a large demand of burgers cuz zamato and swi zabad do they share data yes of demand yes so they will they will help you they

will they will tell you where if if they feel that there's a particular demand in a particular region which is underserved by that particular kind of Cuisine that they will kind of come in and they will inform you I also know of like a a new coffee chain that's trying to expand and grow and their mandate for Real Estate is just open next to a Starbucks Starbucks are you talking about blue toai third I'm an inves no actually what is what is interesting is is I personally feel that you know we tend to run and we tend to go after the same locations and everybody wants to go there it is the locations which are unders served which has the aspiration

which has the spending power are the ones which will actually landine up doing much better for you because get them at better rentals yeah uh you get a a way more you know your pipeline is much bigger because those those people are really really underst there's so many areas in in in everywhere which are completely un but you know typical you know Market intelligence will tell you okay these other areas of go I think that if you kind of use uh the demographic data that is available right you know you've done done you know what your customer looks like you know areas where they are and they are in abundance and there are no other restaurants to

service them those are really really good areas to go and set up sh so if I don't have the means to afford this data through gll or KPMG or real estate guys can I go sit in the competition and write down how many people are coming absolutely to do it that is actually the best way to do it in fact um markets change their dynamic in nature so a great market across the street could soon become irrelevant because you know a highway is being constructed across the street or another cooler mall is coming up this happened to me many times where I've been part of a Resturant do malls work malls are doing fairly well but you know here's the point I've done

a lot of research on this malls are good for incidental footfall but cost prohibitive and your margins in a stand loone restaurant with lower incidental footfall your margins are going to be better than in a mall a mall has a lot of hidden things marketing cost parking cost cam the common area maintenance obviously the rent and the rent is on super area so if you have 500 square ft depending on efficiency you could be paying for as much as for 1,000 square fet although you're occupying 500 foot carpet so it is good from a brand building perspective and it can make money but your Abida margins which is the real margin that you look at would

perhaps be better served not always but in many cases in Stand loan sites in and even better here's the beauty of India in tier 2 and tier three cities fzy Cafe is now in about 15 cities of India and we're actually seeing some of our best performing stores to be coming out of tier 2 and tier three they're beating Bombay and de Bangalore is the best example but it's obviously a Metro tier one city but why does every brand every new brand especially MNC open its first store in Bangalore reasons are simple it has got Metro level purchasing power and and a super sophisticated clientele with people from all over the country that are living in

Bangalore they don't go home and cook they don't even have gas connections most probably they go out and enjoy do you have data around how much people eat out city-wise yeah it is there at a fairly granular level so if it's across the nation four times a month or one time eight times a month no eight times a tce a week inur uh cities in urban India 16 times so if the real C is 16 if the real estate cost of the city is higher and they have smaller homes they go out to eat more so I'm guessing Bombay will be the highest not necessarily actually it's not no Bombay has High Cost of Living and it's I mean it's there's

still a whole bunch of you know different demographics involved for us in our system Bombay is not the number one city for uh Revenue per square foot so the rail metric you should look at is revenue per square foot so if you got a 10,000 square foot restaurant you're doing a CR a month is different from doing 80 lakhs from a 5,000 foot right there's more efficiency in the smaller one so from that perspective I think for us Revenue per square foot is coming highest in other cities not even Delhi Bombay Bangalore Hyderabad Kolkata and um it just shows the depth that this country has I mean just look at the numbers one in three people today

is either middle class or wealthier today by 2030 that number is going to become 1 in two a country with 1.5 billion means 750 million people will be middle class and able to afford the products that we're selling when does that change let's say when is that ship going to come home yeah when is that when is that ship go to dog 2030 they 2010 that was 2022 they say density of restaurants in India is about 10% of China and 2% of us exactly 10% yeah exactly 10% you look at any chain which is here the numbers you take that multiply that by 10 or 11 that many restaurants are there in China China consumption changed and real estate

prices in China are far more affordable spending power parity is higher so we have our challenges real estate prices in India are ridiculous right the entire I don't understand the market where percent percentage are so high yields are so low but I would assume the rental market is not so bad no terrible so I'll give you an example I have a Resturant 4% commercial no no% commercial so the the deal that they sign office pieces 6% yield you're talking about you're talking about the yield to the owner yeah yeah 4 even 4% 4% residential would be 3% before tax but that's because the price is so high and your your your interest component is 8% so how is that

how is that making any sense rent don't buy right real estate rent for commercial activities such as restaurants is out of whack there is a market called Galleria in guro where I live that restaurants per square foot cost a restaurant if you take 500 square foot is more then canot Place more than bandra more than Kaba more than KH Market KH Market was the most expensive and it's in GGO there are restaurants that have signed within India that have lower sorry that have a higher rent per square foot than my restaurant in the US or Canada or in traff traff girl Square in England can you imagine a restaurant in Deli or Bombay that has cost you more

per square foot than London whereas but are you paying that rent because it's worth it and you're getting that much food fall cuz I'm guessing it's a supply demand market right if nobody can make money out of that much real estate people would not be paying that much yeah so firstly let me be very clear margins in overseas restaurants are either equal or a bit higher we had a session recently at one of the Summits where it was me and two other restaurants who had restaurants overseas and all of them came to the conclusion that margins overseas are can be either equal or higher and the main C is real estate occupancy cost and the

lease they they're signing leases for six six years they're making you invest up to a million dollars in a restaurant and the and the thing will only last for six years there's no logic whereas overseas it's 15 to 20 years right and the so I'll give you my use case okay so I had a thesis around restaurants and I started investing in a bunch of them broadly my thesis was if I were to pick up many independent restaurants what is the word used yeah CDR casual dining restaurants casual dining restaurants if I were to aggregate a bunch of them bring them together create one entity which has a few hundred of them my valuation that I get from the equity

markets when I go to raise money will be a bridge or an Arbitrage between the discrepancy of the 10 multiple that CDR is getting now and the 100 multiple that qsr is getting do you think that makes sense only if your potential investor will see scale in each of those entities that you've wrapped up into one you're saying there is scale because you're transitioning well to tier two tier three you could look at it from that perspective but if a sophisticated investor would look at it they would probably say that your as a whole as some of a whole you definitely have this you know large um scale and as a result in every city you

could each open each one of these 10 brands and have 10 restaurants per per um per City however I think a more sophisticated investor will look at the scalability of each of those 10 brands right this is a model that could work again you know I think uh if You' got 10 brands that are in the CDR space and affordable and they have scale potential you could you could have many Brands there's what we do Phoenix is doing they are buying Phenix so basically the house of Brands is a story see the point is what 85% of the processes are the same for restauran thing right you negotiating the right lease getting the licenses hiring training setting up

management information systems HR licensing all other same what changes is what's on the wall and what's on the menu right that's 15% of the business 85% is all the other stuff that really that 15% is just the details but we are seeing that India is invest is dining out a lot more they're going to cdas a lot more the market is four times as big is growing at at 20% whereas qsrs have kind of hit a road bump the the only problem is the only problem is that of course because we are seeing people now premiumize right we seeing people wanting a better quality of life a better quality of Lifestyle the problem is there have not

been any precedents and there have been too many dead bodies in the CD r space and there have been quite a few success stories in the qsr space right so the entire value chain now is singing this one song it's going to take one guy to come along change the rules and then everything else will change I think one person has already come I think barbecue nation is doing a damn good job of now getting multiples House of brasas they I'm talking about a I'm talking about a CDR matching up to the scale potential of a qsr for example I mean uh they also follow that process of choosing back of you know back and Beyond kind of locations but they have

such brand pull that they're able to do crazy numbers and they're trading at many I mean I know stock market goes up and down they listed soed and they are trading at many multiples of sale and obviously at one point in time they were beating even the likes of qsr certain qsrs in on the stock stock market that changes every day so don't Puja uh for your category let's say macarons deserts all of that do you see scope in restaurants being built around that or do you think the cafe model is more the way to go restaurants focusing on desserts like there are often times you would go to a restaurant I go to certain places where

I love the dessert and I eat the food because I can eat this at the end what is the dessert contribution in in your restaurants I don't think it's very high and half% it's not very high but that's my restaurant the it's different right I mean I mean look we had a we had a a cafe I wouldn't call it a full-fed restaurant but it was a cafe but 30% of our Revenue did come from desserts 30% came from food and the rest came from beverages coffee um coffee and tea coffee is really growing right coffee is really growing is that something you would consider um it's a whole different I think coffee and dessert is you know

just it's a marriage that's made in heaven I would love to do it now yes do you think this whole Trend at least in the premium segment if premiumization is working like riy said and the premium segment will grow faster this health not eating sugar staying away from dessert do you think those things will become significantly bigger issues for someone like you 100% And and that's that's something I'm actively working on as well um and I'm seeing that from the last like 13 years to today um I don't know who it was but they told me that sugar is going to be the next tobacco sugar already is the next tobacco no don't say that Jamie

Oliver listen here's the thing should be tax like nobody stopped smoking cigarettes and nobody stopped eating dessert and that is what you remember but yeah I am working on something that is going to be it's a very low base right now the health conscious people when people are going out they're going out to indulge I also feel like people want to think that they're eating healthier no one really yeah can that ever truly work like can you replace sugar with M fruit or Stevia you can and taste that good uh that's what we attempting to do hopefully we get there by January so what is the healthier alternative if I

am a young I mean it depends on what it depends on what your you know everyone has a different so for him it could be uh gluten for example for somebody else it could be sugar if I want to replace sugar with a healthier option which tastes just as good in your opinion what is it today um I mean see all of them will spike your glucose levels right whether you take jaggery or you take um no no he's saying he's talking about replacement repl I'm saying not glucose non glucose non glucose sweetness so jaggy would not be an option then you're saying no monk fruit is the new super product monk fruit is great I would use a lot of natur not to Stevia like you

you had like a expression of disgust when I said it's got really bad aftertaste like metallic yeah it's not it's not very good there's another problem with stevia the new study the stabilizer used in svia the way we eat it is um supposed to increase chances of stroke significantly As Natural sugars fruit dates things that are more but that's tested glucose or it's not it's not a sugar replacement you're just Ching the sauce and the mineral content of the gr but then your options are all chemicals then only monk fruit I think example it's a question of taste right if you see how many people have transitioned from Coke to Diet Coke

seamlessly and yes the first four five times you're like what is this taste but once you get into that kind of flavor right then you stop noticing so it just becomes a thing like I'm going to drink diet coke now if I get Coke in I drink Coke I'm like what the hell is this I don't even like it anymore no that's yeah but the point is that whole company's transitioned on this premise what do you think the big opportunity is there in your space if somebody were to be passionate about pastries like you I I would say for me especially cuz this is something that I struggle with a lot as well and um I think that for me I still when I

when I don't want to eat sugar I still want to eat something that tastes quite similar um but I'm happier to eat something that is natural sugar like so if it's sweetened with bananas or dates or apples it just feels like it's giving me a lot more than using plain white sugar so I think that the opportunity is how can you make a cleaner you know Indulgence which is not okay so the qsr industry in us for example is 50% in China is 20% in Korea is 30% of of that market of that market in India is just 3% today in UK you're saying it's it's 50% of the US US yeah us yes us I I read this number that as much as 60% of overall consumption in the country is

qsr really of food no just consumption overall consumption across the GDP yeah AC across the GDP across the consumption Spectre and see most of the money people spend is on food right like even in India consumption income yeah between groceries and eating out and delivery and all of this is a large part of consumption I think the US the rent will probably be the biggest but you're right I think in terms of gross disposable income spend food would be highest they don't cook at home yeah they eat out more often than anybody except the singaporeans so which way do you think India will go India is at 3% do you think we'll go the China way where there

seems to be a balance of dinin qsr all of that working which qsr has only grown to 20% and stopped there I think that's a cultural difference you think India is more going to mimic China than America because culturally we are similar my boat goes to China it's it's it look in America fast food works because it's labor Arbitrage you go to a supermarket you buy the ingredients you chop it you cook it it you stir it you plate it you wash the dishes after that is going to cost you more than going to a qsr ordering that that burger that fry that shake is going to be cheaper faster quicker and in in India it's not that yet it's still cheaper to make food at

home it's the labor or the labor Arbitrage is still not considered that important right always going to be uh somebody at home who's who's happy to cook for you who's going to happily clean the dishes for you so that that price Arbitrage is not there so the value Seekers will continue is that what could actually help your industry eventually if cost of Labor goes up it will go it will go up because you see right now one in four employable people are Indians in the world one out of 6 and a half is Indian one out of four in the world and somewhere the demand and Supply is going to equalize we anyway seeing um a lot of strain on on the

labor department Canada has opened up his his gateways they taking in as many people the Middle East is taking in you know shiploads of people from India and I'm talking only about in the hospitality that'll make it more expensive for you in it will get so this this demand Supply you know Gap is going to how has the cost of Labor gone up for you in your restaurants let's say over the last 5 years I think what has happened is we have look you want to be south of 15% when it comes to your labor cost that is a broad level thumb room so 30% cost of goods 35% cogs right you got 15% labor 15% uh rental 15% incidental you want to make 20 to 25%

marketing about 3% or 4% is that all yeah what is working in marketing now I see Puja is very active on social media right what percentage of your clientele is coming in through social media media and what is working I'm guessing Performance Marketing in the manner that worked a few years ago with Facebook and Instagram ads and Google ads I don't think that works as well anymore right no so I think for me um social media just started off as something that I was just doing because it felt very natural uh the phone was like the extension of my hand I was in the kitchen making a cake you were a natural you are a

natural with that reals I can't so anyway so I take but that's working more right videos are working more than pictures yeah so what works give me two hacks why does have 7 million followers where others do not what works now I don't know what worked for you uh being in the right place at the right time describe that I knew that was going to come back and bite me but you s you reap yeah elaborate there's one thing I've gotten from you also I'll use it later um I think it was a time when um Instagram wasn't as uh big as it is today it was more organic um and I just feel that I was in a space where I had a

lot of customers uh who were very popular and who are very popular and well known and have millions and millions of followers and um I think it was also me sharing my whole experience about building L 15 I've always been honest open did that help your personal story yes 100% cuz people related to it right people love a story they're like okay it was as much about you as it was about the picture of the food you were putting on exactly and I would and I would be honest what made your story interesting um I don't know I think it was just a girl at that age doing something different um following her passion like a lot of people feel like

you know like did it come across on screen your passion like when you spoke about food is that something that really worked I think so I like to believe so and I and for me it was that right um so two things that worked was one being at the right place at the right time and two just uh I think uh honestly I don't know I think you're cutting yourself a little short I think her content quality was I didn't even know that that was content right like I didn't know I was just doing it because I L doing it and I enjoyed doing it I didn't realiz that was creating content and you know I was just like I'm documenting my life and I'm talking

about what a great day I had in the kitchen someone who's working with me what's happening this dinner stuff like that and it just became like a a window into my life is there any agency used you used anyone that helped you creating this content that other people can use no I just feel that when you it I feel when you're authentic about your story and you do it yourself it's a lot it it it hits a lot uh deeper than if someone else is creating it for you um even if someone agencies building that content for you I think it should be driven The Narrative should be driven by you that supersedes quality of video 100% and things that we see that right now right

like things that we post just randomly reals which are just like a half eat in something will do so much better than something that is orchestrated and created and product you know it's a production I want to ask you a question actually finally sure what do you look at when you you said you've invested in certain restaurants and cafes and things what is it that you look at financials first uh at reasonable valuations I'm a stock market guy right like I look at public markets very closely so when I saw qsr chains getting the multiple that they are while they are just franchise models replicating a foreign product in necessarily not a Innovative way I don't

think they deserve that valuation I don't think think din in restaurants deserve the low valuation they they are getting as well because to be fair to them they're creating a more nuanced product than a qsr chain and here I'll tell you something it's you know India is a market without precent right it is unique in many ways uh we spoke about uh consistency mhm the whole point in and and you know I think a lot of tsrs have have TomTom consistency perhaps because don't want to tell you what is going into the Patty or what is how much cheese is in the sauce right that is not something that you want it to be

available for public consumption that's something you got and then you put the gar of consistency on it the fact remains is that flavor profiles change every 100 kilometers we in Delhi we like red chili spice yeah right in Maharashtra we like a green chilies but we like our food little katam we like a little in Gujarat we like in in in the south of India we like black pepper spice and these are the flavors that we like and this is a Biryani it's it's so the the karda Biryani is different from the Tamil Biryani is different from the Hyderabad that you go to the the M Salon and used to a Bombay Biryani with Alo a Kata

Biryani with Al so flavors change right yeah we are a country which eats differently we we we share things you know we don't appetizer main cost our own dessert yeah we like to pick we like food fresh right we we like this is in a way your case against qsr it's not my case against qsr it's my case for India right I think that you have to create products for India find the new India and India you have to create a product which is more nuanced than a q a product which understands India more culturally you can't force it and even even all the qsr have come in have at some point of time what they they call Innovation have had

to indianized right and they call they calling it Innovation but the fact remains is that culturally we like to we like to share things right we like you know so do we like to see a sandwich which has been lying there in the fridge for 4 hours necessarily we we abort it right if a ro FKA comes one will come then another one come then another will come we like our food really piping hot K the coffee that you get we you don't like that coffee so many times you you know you you you're doing guret coffee you don't want to burn it you don't take it over 90° but if you give an Indian coffee Which is less than 100 it's going to send back

here tundy right so I'm I'm not saying good bad ugly whatever I'm not judging but this is how we consume this is how we like our food we like anyone building for India the nuanced India that you spoke about you're saying hit a micro Market don't build anything generic that you think the entire country will like no I'm saying that one will denight Delight in all manifestations of this thing right we by Nature when we think about food we think about variety right resta but give me a definitive tip that me as a 20-year-old trying to start a restaurant I get that India is nuanced I get that people in south west east north all like different things if I were to

go about building a restaurant business how do I utilize that see definitely novelty will get you the the attention but Comfort will get you the repeat business where where and I think that that's a significant difference between your Cafe business and the restaurant business because in in restaurants we're looking for novelty we're looking for elevation we're looking for experience in a cafe we're looking for Community we're looking for convenience we're looking for comfort and their frequency as a use case is way higher like if today I I I love his food I think one of you know of the best Indian restaurants in India and in the world are from his

table he gives best quality service best quality food best quality value you know I I treat like a king but tomorrow I'm going to be like Chinese Kore you know it it so you will you will seek variety but in a in a in a cafe you not going to say k to Starbucks together M you'll be it's it's something that you want to kind of reach out for automatically so there's a distinction between a cafe and a restaurant in that sense and there'll always be a distinction between are you trying to sell a novel product which people is a new new thing is it a custard fil

cruffin or am I giving you a moti Cho ladu which is going to last or am I taking a m l and making it into cavier like what does and I think there's a market for it all because we seek it by Nature we seek it we are we are comfortable with four mobile phone providers we are comfortable with 20 shirt makers they're comfortable with 30 watch makers but when it comes to food we want thousands and thousands of restaurants and that's the way it is interesting so the unorganized sector in India is disproportionately large compared to the US China Europe if we were to I don't have the exact numbers for 7 65 for 35 65 unorganized 65

unorganized and we are assuming the industry put together is between 50 to 10000 billion we couldn't find the exact number because it's hard to yeah so about uh 40 to 50 50 to 55 50 50 billion is and as growing compounded annually at 20% 21% CDR so what is what is the big opportunity when unorganized transitions to organize I think which will happen in inevitably organized is growing at a much faster rate than un organiz organ unorganized is also growing but organized is growing faster we are seeing movement towards Brands uh you know established Brands reputed brands people are gravitating

towards it but again what is a brand right you know uh in Bombay Sardar paaji started off with you know Taylor now is a brand right uh uh kti College W is still roadside food but is also a br sorry so I think that uh people are are wanting to move towards Branch because they don't they don't want to risk that investment that they're doing in a bad quality product yeah this just questions to remind me sorry please continue that's it I finish my P and do you think quality is a big factor playing into why people go for a brand because people are unsure of what food there might be I think it plays a massive role in the perception of

quality is perhaps one major parameter that you have to take off before you choose which place to patronize convenience is I think perhaps an equally big factor how easily you can get to it how easily you can park there um what kind of option does it serve can my whole family be served see Indians eat out in families we don't just go husband and wife we go with husband wife kids sometimes grandparents sometimes parents so they want China That's why multi Cuisine does so well in India D dad can eat can that ever work Z like if I had a restaurant where I do Chinese tanduri Japanese Indian and something else can I do justice to any of that you

can't I don't so here's the thing the market has proven that it works so financially it's going to now that's all that's working I get annoyed each time I see that you can't have a speciality restaurant that excels in everything no in the same kitchen if you got you can't have really the very best of Indian food and then you know you suddenly have the very best of Japanese food cuz you have one Chef right no no one main Che there are departments there are sections within every kitchen every section has its own but if I'm making garam masala here can I be making sushi on the side and well people are doing it people are doing it can they it

well it can be done to a competent level I don't think it can be done as well as say a restaurant specializing in sushi will you get as good as sushi at um you know for example you believe it or not hams give Sushi okay and U will it be as good as say u a papaya or a yaoa or sorry yaa doesn't do sushi but like our Coco you probably um will see a difference but the market is what dictates what you serve and multi- Cuisine even though um it's something that uh forms a very small part of my system I think has its has made its space Indians go out in families D is eating something else children are eating something else the husband and

wife are eating something else but can a speciality restaurant perhaps produced a higher quality uh experience a speciality restaurant will probably create a higher quality experience for sure it can it's not it's not impossible if you go if you think about like you think of a hotel right let's say take a hotel which has exceptional Cuisine and there are hotels like that it's all H by one Chef right is there no actually hotel has different disciplines every every kitchen would have its own Chef yes but you have one executive chef for the whole hotel right you have special but they all report to one Chef so in that what I was trying to say is that um

I think the context in which you're consuming food is also very very important right I mean you can if you are you're consuming Japanese then to have food in that kind of context adds value to it right right if you are if you eating um Empire kebabs and at that particular point of time being in that area of sitting in your car has context to it so how big how big is Ambiance I think it's I was the kind of guy who 10 years ago would say to you that food is number one priority and everything else revolves around it so you can't eat the painting you can't eat the floor you can't eat the beautiful sculpture that you got but

you can't eat the food on the plate over the years I will have to accept that Ambience perhaps plays an equally important role because it changes the way how you feel but to each their own I am the kind of person who go and hunt for a Food Spot even in bil Lanes my favorite restaurant not sometimes you look for Ambiance person would not person some days you would some days you would look for and the and the culture that I'm trying to build uh within our within our specific uh company is that you have strike a balance so the food has to be the main main stay but if it looks good it feels good people have gone into this

showoff situation if you look at Dubai Dubai has some some of the greatest restaurants now but Dubai first started becoming a city where the look and field was perhaps more important than was being served some of the best restaurants were not doing as well as the ones that were that looked great it has to be a balance it has to be a combination I can I ask a parallel question why does food in India never taste at par with the best restaurants of Dubai London and stuff is it ingredients which are not available honestly I think in many cases Indian food tastes better I'm not food in India I mean I mean food in India

tastes better I can tell you that a macaroon that she makes is not going to be much different in fact even May Superior if Puja was in France she was in Paris the access to ingredients she would have would be betterred her macaron in Paris would taste better than roed quality yeah the Almond the kind of almond you would choose and stuff like that but so I had I'll give an example why are those ingredients not available in India is it because the customer will not pay the price to Warrant it in some cases yes the whole supply chain right like by the time you get in get the ingredients here the whole by the time it reaches you but I wondered we grow

like all that they grow there here as well right like why is that so much better quality but I don't think it is better I do not think that is better no so I think it's I think it's Puja de go on can I say basically if we take the same standard recipe and we take it to Delhi it'll be different it'll taste much better in Delhi yeah 100% yeah but if I bring it to Bombay also from in Bangalore to me it'll taste better in Bangalore because the quality of ingredients available is there also there is no artisanal Pride right now in our agricultural economy right we there's no guy who's you know massaging uh the feet of the cattle or

or their livestock oring yeah but I'm talking I a lot of Aral farmer markets I think there's some really good stuff growing yes it's growing but look at the base it's operating and and I'm talking about look at the larger ecosystem I you're not going to get a beautiful locky right now well artial Pride I mean because people don't get rewarded for that they are right now they are the way the entire agricultural value chain is set up right it is the mbas who are going you know and and going back to the Villages buying land and deploying scientific method and they're coming up with all these

beautiful things yes but the larger ecosystem where which is the Mundy system where you know it's a commodity system they are not being rewarded for artisinal products they're not they are more concerned with keeping their crop alive than making sure they don't going to risk they they they you know they they barely hand to mouth they cannot afford to take chances with their CR I think the question is to you guys like would you buy if you get artisanal produce at three times the cost of current produce why would artisanal produce cost three okay one and a half times but why would organic cost more than inorganic I'm guessing artial can't

be M simple thing is yield is the yield dictates that I think the chemicals increase yield right yeah that's right the GMO may increase yield but uh the the cost of producing something is is actually cheap with organic than it is with inorganic we've done a lot of work on this one we've gone we've gone deep into provenance we had we've had four provenance officers going in understanding the product uh is what we get in India called organic actually organic so one is the fact that it is well you could you could go go back like four years ago was there any pesticides use so I mean it's still mky it's still transitioning

but again another thing is that when you're importing things right India is a agricultural economy so the tariffs and excise is prohibitive for anything excise for example if you were to import Coffee Bean and I think Starbucks faces challenge it's a 180% duty on coffee it's more than what You' pay for a car because you're protecting your agricultural economy so so on one hand you cannot import you know quality ingredients on the other hand there is no artisanal Pride on or or a system that rewards artisanal uh agriculture and then this Mundy system where there is no provenance or accountability for what you're really producing I think if

I have to just look at it from a dessert lens 14 years ago it was so difficult to find local ingredients right you had to use imported chocolate you had to use everything imported to get that same quality and consistency but today 14 years later you get great Indian chocolate uh we use as much local ingredients as we can some things we still have to use that are imported but that change is happening so I would say that it's but today if you had to produce the quality of macaron you did at College in Paris in India how much more would it cost you I think we're pretty much at par cuz

we use you know the Almond flow we use Etc it it is but if you were to bring it from there and make it or if you were to go there and make it yeah then I would be selling there and make it it'll probably I would be selling it for 300 bucks of macro importing it do you it for now do you think there is a market at 300 I mean lad exists in India so 300 yeah I think the question I'm trying to get to is that if you guys were to scatter one or two restaurants which are Ultra Premium in terms of produce and quality is there a market like you charge five times more than what you charge for a dish today yeah absolutely then why are you not

attempting it we already quite premium so I know but if there is a market there at 3 00 rupees of macaroon why are you not attempting that we did try um with Louis burger with the 88r burger with real truffles real black truffle shavings yeah worked very well at one point in time it was 10% of our sales it was a huge Market but then it is a delivery Burger any of the day and no matter what kind of packaging you put around it it's hard to sell a almost 900 rupe Burger to somebody at home but I think there's a huge market for the ultra fine dine uh there are wonderful restaurants including my own shamess PL scalable no

it's not it's not scalable so Masala library for example is a restaurant that I have I have one in Bombay another one opening in Delhi and then I have one in in duha in Qatar now these are all premium restaurants the price per head is 3 4,000 rupees per head you know with liquor um they're not scalable but here I can afford to buy the high-end produ produce I can afford to buy the high-end ingredients and I can afford to buy the really high quality stuff right so I can afford to buy those high quality ingredients because I can sell them at a higher price so some of these things definitely do come into play yeah and but there's a limited market can you

buy the same tomato uh or the same vegetable at a price that is three times uh because of it being organic and again I think it's a heeld issue uh in all say all fzy cafes it'll probably increase the price I have to transfer some of that price to the consumer so there is a market for everything I think but yes at this point time India is not a very rich country we cannot we cannot be delusional we still have a per capita income of under $4,000 and uh we still have 15% of the population currently below the poverty line at least by latest estimates I think the number is a little bit higher but India as a market from a food

perspective from a consumer consumer perspective is going to be the biggest uh the third biggest consumer Market in the world by 2030 after the US and China every time Z speaks I see a flag flying on over his head so patriotic I am extremely patriotic and I also and I also believe in the future of this country I think this is going to be in fact uh the world's largest consumer Market because of the simple rate of growth of our population by 2050 should we take like a tiny break yeah [Music] yeah [Music] this is the fancy one gold this is the

fancy one I can't wait to have the Louis Burger man that looks [Music] amazing M okay guys ready start what do you guys think of celebrity owned restaurants M far absolutely they never absolutely worked worked very good you know the only country in which you like it good the only country in which a celebrity SL sports star run restaurant is the most popular Sri Lanka because their celebrities are the cricketers so and every other country in the world you could take Planet Planet Hollywood okay it had AR Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone as the founders bombed so many

I'm not going to take individual restaurants numbers um if you look at even within India sports stars have owned restaurants Virat kohi Virat kohy um Zahir Khan is not doing well sain tandul isn't doing well when it is when it is might be an exception that is doing well in certain areas I'm just saying in general they don't tend to do that well celebrity owned all of your restaurants all of are rs so I think people see through it come on um the only by the way the the most successful Japanese celebrity for owning a restaurant huh you a celebrity for owning a restaurant so that's true we're definitely Eternal optimists for owning

a restaurant so I think the only only restaurant that is celebrity owned that is a worldwide phenomena and extremely successful is Believe It or Not noou partially owned by Robert DeNiro in fact the first original inesta when Chef noo didn't have the money was so that's that's trivia for you but yeah in general I think people go to restaurants for the overall experience celebrity can probably pull you in for the launch can probably pull you in for hosting the right tables getting initially the buzz going that buzz will last as much as the first or second visit after that the quality of the product has to speak and restaurants which do these big

launches they call 500 people give them free food and all of that does that work you guys do that I we do it I do it I think we all do it I mean I don't know we definitely done that is that for your own entertainment or is it for the restaurant no we don't I don't we enjoy that I mean we we bought to death of it but the point is that you need to have a good launch you need to have you know you need to open up your social media and see pictures of your favorite you know so much noise right there you know it creates it creates it does create for more it does create urgency you know it does create uh we need to go here you know everybody people who come to attend

like somebody somebody like hosting sometimes hosting so I'll tell you uh you get to launch only once okay you get to launch only once and if you don't make a big enough buzz you probably will have uh a slower more teid more a slower more tepid uh kind of a you know uh pickup so I think that's not necessarily good especially with the high stakes games that the restaurants are uh definitely paying people to come no way uh you often have PR companies that help you with it and agencies that help you with it so the payment should be restricted to that not celebrities coming in it's it's not going to help you it's definitely not going to help

people come back but models models are not paid they're just given in kind by with free liquor and food ryaz might have other ways of recovering in kind of I I don't know what you're talking what about aggregator relationships riyaz will take this I heard like you guys are very p with them and somebody's not paying them anything and all of that no that's not true please make me that person and let me get access to that but maybe you're paying 10% whereas everyone else is paying 30 who is this nobody's paying 10% I think as far as I know they might be if you do exclusivity they might give

you a lower percentage so first of all let's be honest there are lots of differential pricing yeah which is available how do you negotiate it you would negotiate it is it scale alone or is see I think the guys who signed up at a particular price point right in the early days they started off with 10% that went to 12% they went to 14% and right now it is at a I think the only sustainable delivery commission that is payable is 12% you can't pay a single rupee more than that however now the norm is 24 to 28% they're signing at people at 24 and but

when you say 12% you mean including the other cost because if you add I'm only only talking about delivery this is a triple D model okay you got you've not just got your delivery cost you've got your Discovery cost which means that you're paying to be visible in a carousel you're paying to be visible in one of those collections I think that they they you would easily spend about 12% more on that so you're looking at now 40% which has gone to the ex on top of that your average discounting is at 14 to 15% well if you don't discount customers don't come to you that is the way it has been gained so how does work so

55% of your margins are taken by the aggregators and they can't make money with that kind of gos Mark and you don't I'm telling you you left with 45% to get cogs packaging marketing which is non-app related marketing right you got to build your brand you got to do non app related stuff uh your rentals your salaries but why are people going to aggregators because there's no other alternative if you build your own Fleet the cost would be prohibitive uh there would be a risk associated with managing the Manpower various things and the ease of the consumer the consumer is so used to using those apps is very hard so

sometimes we try and obviously we don't get data from the aggregators so we want to collect that data so we offer bigger discounts to try and get that customer to order directly and yet the adoption rates are fairly Lowe agregator world how did all this work phone we were doing ourselves you're delivering yourself and that's it was a small business for and Domino they they definitely have built the business but I think the margins are not sustainable so when he said 12% it's actually not 12% it's more than that it's 12% plus payment Gateway which you have to pay anyway 2% plus GST will be 12% is the only sustainable number that can but

you're talking about including taxes because the GST is another big problem for us right actually becomes the 12 becomes like 16 yeah and that's where your margins get completely constrained and they then say to build relevance the term used um you have to spend more money so I think um the platforms have definitely built this huge market and this ecosystem and made Indians fall in love with delivery made it very easy easy to get it convenient and convenience will always win so there's no point of it's going to be a uphill battle to try and build your own system uh if a lot of restaurants top delivery Partners uh sorry top um restaurant

partn Partners get together and build their own system might might potentially work individually it'll be hard to address it and it won't make sense because adoption rates will be solo and the amount of money you'll have to spend to get those people to come to your app or your landing page and order it's going to be it's going to be trickling can't like a bunch of you get together because you guys have such broad chains and create your own like a Cooperative of restaurants running their own delivery R should address this it's it's going to become increasingly critical that we have a Counterpoint we we are developing and

working very closely um with onc now we are going to build channels we are going to start building competencies because um we have nothing against aggregators we appreciate that they have actually helped build a demand right which is not competing with the restaurant business the delivery business is competing with the kitchen is not competing with restaurant but while they've done that they've taken away any hope of margin so we all running just to stay in the same place so we are going to f focus on onc we are going to focus on our own delivery Fleet slowly but slowly we

going to develop technology Stacks that going to help us do this better uh and like I said we have nothing against the aggregator but we what we are against is the tyranny of the aggregator where things are unilaterally changed where uh if you don't play by the book you taking off the platform or your your your delivery radius drops or your visibility is there or you're just not available for customers to see and does everybody feel this way across restaurants predominantly majority I do it's it's also interesting because in my office for example right they all these 23 24 year olds and they order food everyday lunches coming from zamato origi and

it's never about the brand that they've ordered from it's like what's the best deal I got today and that's what the customers now used to theyve made deal Seekers out of customers so it's just it's like an addiction discounting has become an addiction and that's never a good thing whenever you build an entire system based on giving discounts eventually the consumer suffers eventually at the cost of profitability is growth at the cost of profit and also sometimes I feel that the funding of that discount is being done by the restaurant at the cost of the restaurant um so I think that there has to be some kind of dialogue that needs to increase

and I think that's happening I think both sides are willing to talk and leaz with each other positive proactive man um worldwide you've seen this happen where eventually it becomes an ecosystem that's a win-win so let's hope for that but if they're not able to be profitable at their current margins how will they be at one3 I'm maybe they should stop buying rubbish companies if I were to be an investor in zamato which is a publicly list stock should this make me worried if all restaurants are thinking this way including our pastry chef it's going to take some time they have adjusted a bit us too and which is good

I think see look they definitely are a a duopoly right this is definitely a growing market and what they have seen is that for every 5,000 restaurants that come off their plat from every week they get another 6,000 restaurants coming in their state they don't care they agnostic to the faith of the restaurant they are only building the the habit forming activity they are building the the use case which is great the problem is that what is happening to those guys who are putting up the Investments or quitting their jobs taking all their life savings and putting that into uh a business because it's a business that

you can acheve bus set up the average guy who set up a kitchen with you know who's getting into the restaurant industry the first time entrepreneur doesn't have the sophisticated marketing techniques where he can push those products out he is completely dependent on visibility that comes from the from those platforms but the system will go on the discounting will go on I don't have a very distopian view of the future I think in the future there will be some form of um coherence and rationality being built in that would mean both parties would need to address situations I really think that

commissions need to be addressed and I really think that data sharing should become uh something that H starts happening important don't share any data now uh not customer data there's enough data being shared let me just be I order from say a masala library and I get the food I order via spigg orato or any other agregator you don't know who Ed I don't know who you are and obviously there are ways you you can put a little pamphlet that if you have a problem call us and all that but that doesn't really work and but they wouldn't like that right they actively go through your your packages and remove any such literature the problem is the consumer will still

choose to go on zamato or Swig and order from you that's the problem and it's not necess problem it's a convenience issue if I have an account like I have SW and zamato on my account to be honest and I'm in the delivery business extensively but I have not built my feet and Fleet and I don't really intend to build it immediately till I have uh sense that this money can be recovered um I just think it has to become more of a win-win and a hand in glove scenario where we're not against each other we're working with each other but you want to build the fleet individually when you can get exactly a cluster Fleet that's exactly my point you mean when we get together

some of us get together you would want R you would want Puja you would want like 100 others if absolutely I think that I think that's an alternative Thrive uh I use pay uh but yeah Thrive is another good mechanism and you can do have pinging services from you know a plethora of people which will tell you where to go how to go you can even give tracking Services it's all available what is happening but the discovery element sorry is better on these platforms right when you know when you have the Loyalty when you know exactly what you want there is a use case to go to your you know your app because now you can do it on WhatsApp youve got

catalogs available you can call if you you don't want the hassle you want the convenience all that data stack is available to you on various platform but the discovery component and the the discounting component that is the catnip that people are coming back for but how can they ever discount in a manner that you the originator of the product can discount they can never compete with that right like if you built a platform yourself to deliver your cost price is 30 you can sell it 30 but aggregator can never discount as much as right it's taken years of of taking hits on the bottom line and being and sustaining that to be able to get to

that critical mass where now your delivery guy is is is you know that his salary is paying for and paying for more this is basically a fixed cost versus uh a variable cost model Right restaurant does don't have those Deep Pockets don't even have those margins where they can afford to pay for those things so it is a little bit of a loop but event I think that there will there will be some way out of this is that the same for you Puja with desserts and mu muffins and macaroons and everything I mean the the good thing is we have higher margins so what margins do you operate on 18 20% yeah but

not 30 18 18 20% is what what name should I make the check out seriously that's pretty good yeah oh that below and that's despite using the best ingredients but now I'm going to take this 300 rupe Macon idea yeah I'm going to do it Go With It gold on it yeah gold put gold on it yeah Qui so is there a tip like if I'm a new restaurer and I'm going to swiy and zamato I know it's ridiculously obnoxiously High the margin for whatever reason Market fundamentals how do I negotiate the only way of doing this is to have a really really strong product tell the

aggregators to sit on it like just do your business create a great demand create a great thing they will come to you and they will do it at your price can't you play one the other you can but again if you're an also Rand product if you have a very very solid product M which has great recall which has which has a following which is becoming you know very very trendy people are reaching out and one that you're not on that that's something that they will come to you and say okay we want you exclusively then then you can start playing off actually why can't you tell swiigy I will if you crack a deal with swiy at 15% and tell zomato unless you

do 12% I'll only sell on swiy why wouldn't that work I don't I think I think people have tried that and I don't think it was going to work throughout so they've also wisened up to that but I think more importantly do they work together do they collude no they don't what they don't they don't even hire from each other from what I know neither do we we were still better off our relationship is we're not a multi mulopo okay so I think um there are institutions for example you have truffles in Bangalore they can demand whatever uh rates they can because they're an institution they're a

legendary restaurant regular burger joint cannot do that one way that I would recommend to people that if they're in a certain geography is that you could go the route of being exclusive if you offer that there is a potential of asking for lower percentages because you're in a way alleviating the um ability of that restaurant to be sold that a brand to be sold on another platform that was one way I don't think you can play people against each other and that's not going to work but I I also think it's it's what what we are doing is also working with swiy to create products which is which is that fill a need yeah cuz they

come with come to us and they say okay these are the products that are really working we only have one person instamart especially we only have one person doing this if you can create this I know that I can occupy where there's scarcity where there's a demand Supply yeah imbalance they're really really quick to try and fill up those gaps I've tried the onc app what is it called Magic pin or whatever magic pin that brings your cost down from 20 change per to four five% right what is the issue with it right now so on is definitely a very is a democratization and a commoditization of delivery now here's the beauty there are enough third-party

aggregators that can responsibly and effectively take your product from your Cloud kitchen or your restaurant to the end user there are enough of them now they however perhaps are not as seamless because magicpin or PTM who have these seller apps on onc are still relying on these third party people they're not employees of magic pin or employees of PM they're third party delivery people so that extra charges is there but the way to circumvent that is to be able to charge the consumer fee and I think the fee for 3 km is 50 rupees so if you're within 3 kilm you charge 50 it's a little bit more charge 70 I think people and the

advantage is pric are coming down right the cost of delivery is coming down because as we move into electricity right now right now the cost of the actual hardcore Cog okay cogs of delivery is at 22 rupe is it's not it's what 22 R what 22 Rupees is the cost of delivery for what is what you will pay your guy it's your average dist of 5 K 22 22 Rupees is your cost per kilometer or what are you saying 22 Rupees is your cost of delivery for that package and come back but there has a distance to it right K if it's 100 km you can't 5 km is 22 rupees right your the the problem which is happening is the onc is coming through sell apps and that's only as

good as the fact that how magic pin is doing right the point is that onc once we start creating our own on onc and we start working Regional wise where we start sharpening our delivery uh capabilities are what is called online on demand delivery right because that's what these guys have really CED it's on demand delivery dzo is very good shadowfax is very good at delivery last mile delivery but not necessarily on demand the trick is to get the meal into their hands in 15 minutes or less after it leaves from the kitchen has to be able to get to that person but that will happen with scale right incredible Innovation though right

it's beautiful it's a democratization yeah the beauty of the Indian Tex tack is just amazing it is it is fascinating I think he's a friend of mine nand who's kind of like worked around a lot of these CTO of India incredible CTO of India literally incredible human being yeah and ALS also like keeps the ecosystem together adhar was also his adhar was his brainchild so he has a dinner once in a month at home and he makes sure we all catch up and it's an he's a he's a he's a true Indian yeah he's a true guy who cares about this country about you know about making this country more technically Savvy and a world leader and

his wife like very few people know know rohini but she does so much work in climate and water and Incredibly driven couple and their daughter and their like entire family okay uh Cloud kitchens do they work R had a very strong totally different so but that's interesting yeah Cloud kitens work for where either you are a very strong brand that you've built over the years you come from a certain pedigree and have have the sophistication enough to understand sophisticated marketing tools and CRM and and to be data driven and analytic it's very very difficult for the average what you think mortality rates in the restaurant businesses are

high the mortality rates in the cloud G business are are twice as high because you the data which we've seen I said so we actually 5,000 restaurants a month wow are going off platforms that's 5,000 Broken Dreams every month wow right and they're just going because they cannot man because how will you manage with 55% of your margin is been taken by some I don't think it's 55% I think the numbers are not there push come to shove things things stay as they are today will you build your own Fleet will you have to build your own Fleet I think it's good to have a good balance I definitely would like a scenario where um 25 to 30% of our delivery orders are

done directly from a data perspective I want to have a direct contact with my consumer and get feedback more closely I think that's the sweet spot for mehm so top top dishes chart Biryani sweets or top Cuisines Chinese Indian do you think the odds of success are higher building here or building something new alog together as a new person starting a restaurant pedigree always helps no ped saying that I'm a new guy I've saved up a little bit of money I was working in a job Last 5 Years should I hit North Indian Chinese South Indian or chart chicken biryani sweet from a popularity perspective from from a success odds of success perspect here's the the

double-edged sword here I think is that though Cuisines like North Indian and Biryani might be more popular than S burger and pizza pizzas are now equally popular the problem also remains that there's a lot more competition a lot more players in these fields so it's hard to say we've seen for example a tougher challenge selling pizzas than Burgers whereas the demand for pizzas is far more than burgers in India it's like literally like our dinner and our snack and our lunch Pizza has reached that there are fewer burger places and as a result if you can make a difference make a better product you can stand out and the competition is lower Supply is lower

of rest from the restaurant side whereas in pizzas you're competing with the big boys and although you know Domino's is is the biggest of them all you have Burger King and you have McDonald's but I just think that it's not just the cuisine itself it's also how many people are playing that game at that time it's a it's a demand Supply game depending on which region you're operating in there's certain there are certain areas where there's a certain demand so like for example Mexican is not sought after m in all regions no I'm it's fair like you know there there's there are some areas where you know the there will be no demand for

uh 800 rupe burger and there's some demand where the demand for 800 rupe Burger will out strip that so it is strategic you have I can't give you one answer for the whole Market it depends on which Market you're thinking about operating in that's why you got to see what is being underserved and what if you're thinking about scale it's a different issue but if you're starting off I think you're very well placed by by finding out what what is the demand and uh the aggregators are very happy to share this information with you you can go to them and you can ask them Hey listen where are you seeing a demand Supply mismatch what is an area a gap

that we can help fulfill right and and uh they will very happily give you that data and if you're willing to play that game then yes you you do have a reasonable chance of I think for me when I started I asked myself a very simple question and I just said I don't want to have anything on my menu that's available everywhere and for me that was a differentiation at that time and I think it worked also cuz it's a different Market it's a different premium level um but yeah if you do something that everybody is doing then the competition is obviously a lot more you won't be specifically to answer your question I think it's not about the

cuisine it's about which Market which geography are you serving what for example it might be easy to serve butter chicken in in in in Bangalore than Biryani even though Biryani is more popular best taken from the aggregators and do they give it just like that for free share because they want to build the ecosystem so that's one data that you're never going to have a problem getting they will not give you data of the customer because they want to keep the the funnel to themselves right but and and uh they will site security reasons of course for that but that data is not but any other data where there's a kind of a mismatch or what is being

ordered that is freely available so if you go and you ask them is avilable with and that could be used as a tool for new people right it's Burger man it's quite nied I don't know lamb that looks like lamb do you want to try that what is this sadar where's the chicken there must be some chicken burgers also guys fried chicken burger cold is not going to work coffee supply chain am I missing anything is there a way to negotiate efficiencies in the supply chain to reduce the cost of goods where do you buy supplies from as a restaurant owner multiple vendors all of us rely on

mult hyperpure has been started by zamato that is trying to you know become a platform but at this point in time the vast majority of restaurants around the country are buying from Individual vendors that they've had relationships for years and it's a good thing you should encourage this local farmer local vendor these guys the meat supplier the local butcher the local farmer the local vegetable guy even though he's a consolidator you know and goes to the MonDay every morning picks up the stuff does that effort does that value add and then gives it to you I think that should be supported but there are now Alternatives there are now larger

platforms like hyperpure that are providing a platform and you Puja we also use hyper now for our basic groceries and then we have why is that is it quality is it cost why convenience single vendor for many things do you get credit yeah you get yes but not a lot but you get better credit from the individual vendors and also remember there's a relationship thing I think there's one hand you're saying support the local guys and the other hand what percentage wait small percentage like a fraction how much a fraction okay fraction is in single

digits percentage support the local gu I do I love the local guy in fact I think that I have more of a relationship with the local guy far more than anybody then then I would get with a with a large platform again I don't want to get dependent also on one large player right I want to have my you know these these people for example the the red me the goat that I get in for the NCR region comes from one small butcher who used to First Supply to my house I helped him build capacity I actually said listen I'm guaranteeing you this much purchase can you please start producing more for me and he built the system where now he's actually supplying to

others main points one needs to keep in mind while opening a restaurant one big question location how do you guys narrow down on location because you've all said location location location how do you what do you use individually to figure out the location I think all of us will have some similar points and some overlaps um I I'm a little bit old school in this sense when it comes to a restaurant location a physical offline restaurant location I would like to visit at least once or multiple times if possible and go with the gut I do rely on data but like I said the data is fairly uh you know it's it's not really that accurate and might be stale it

might be stale data that you're getting from these agencies you should go and see other restaurants in the area in other restaurants absolutely that's that's what that's how you do a site survey site survey is a two-day exercise it's not usually a one because you're going to invest 5 six 2 three 5 six CR rupees into a restaurant you should at least give it two days makes logical sense sit there put the time in and I don't think even though I have a great business development team and people I really trust uh and and and and sometimes especially for overseas locations I'm not able to visit I think it's important if you especially if

you're starting out to spend that time to go and focus on that for us for me at least for Bombay it's been cuz I know the city I kind of know um the pulse of it I know where the product will really sell but what we've been doing recently is actually using the cloud kitchen model to kind of understand uh a neighborhood so for example we started a cloud Kitchen in juu for 6 months and we saw that that was really successful and we said okay this Market is successful let's open a store here and we opened a store there so we kind of using that and seeing okay we're do now that's a very good way of doward we're doing Tani now and we're saying okay Tani is doing well

for us Malad didn't do that well for us so we're kind of testing the kex of a cloud kitchen is significantly lower it's lower it's it's it's it's nothing fraction fraction yeah we're working with uh an existing Cloud kitchen so we just Supply Goods there so then it's and they do do the Fulfillment they do supply chain is control not seems like a great hack Supply to an existing croud yeah the Bell is entirely on that yeah real well you know I think uh location uh is also a function of product depending on what kind of product you want to offer so that becomes very important if you are if you are a qsr business you of

course want to be in a fast moving you know audience you want to be able to capitalize on foot on footfall not just uh I'm talking about walking footall not not driving footall because that doesn't really help us uh if you're slightly more sophisticated food how do you count foood for well what do you mean like if you're picking a location and you want to know what is the footfall of people just passing by that place how do you count so I mean we get our data points like from various agencies that that yeah J agencies localers there are local Brokers and uh a lot of the information

that restaurant us get and how does some this information from J they email them 143 loc bomb Central [Music] there everybody knows everybody we know this is the this restaurant is doing this restaurant is doing it's anecdotally available this information is largely on one particular train why no because this is where the crowds mingle this is where all the hospitality guys go back this is where the information comes in they talk to each other there's a loose connection there's some guy who's working for my restaurant

has worked with somebody else and somebody else's restaurant there's always a network so there's always a Lo sharing of information going on about how much business you know this one everybody knows everybody knows that in the industry so there's another form of triangulation another form of triangulation is to basically figure out from your suppliers how much you know which restaurants are buying which regions where they're supplying more your liquor companies these are again uh Rich data sources aggregators again data sources so these are all different data sources that are available to you and

depending on what your product is and what kind of what kind of price points Etc um that is again available the demographic breakup is also available so you can decide no very interesting based on that all three points very interesting how do you account for pillage in accounting and how do you prevent that from happening CU if I'm new and starting a restaurant that that could be a big issue right it is it is unfortunately it's a reality and um you have to learn to ignore some of it but you have to have systems see this is a very this is a very high touch Point industry there are many moving parts and as a result even though

barriers to entry are low you don't need a diploma to open a restaurant the dependence on systems is arguably even higher than perhaps if you're making a ball bearing Factory you're buying from one vendor you're producing in one machine you know not too many people here there are so many gaps the bartender is one so what hacks do you use what do you do I don't think there are any hacks I think there's a lot of like I said building you never out sour Supply like paying the supplier ordering all of that in in so overseas we do that uh the entire accounting for example in fzy Cafe London is outsourced because we don't for one restaurant not going to

build a whole finance department in India we do it fully internalized um you have to have systems you I cannot downplay the importance of you know like I said it's it is low barrier to entry but there are just so many gaps you have to have dependence on good people build good C good culture perhaps develop a direct relationship with your vendors so when I say pill fridge I mean you're I assuming you're saying consumer comes and bills not raised or the vendor is supplying 10 and you're being charged for 12 right culture building um making sure there enough audits we we we do a bunch of audits but I think it's more important

you just have to learn you can't police people for too long can you remote control a restaurant can you not be physically at that particular branch and check for all this yeah I mean how is what what are your methods of accounting and so basically um opening stock less purchases closing stock is basic accounting but what you follow is standard recipes which are fed into your point of Sal system your your inventory management system needs to be linked with a point of sale system from from your sale of today if I've sold let's say in a month I've sold 300 coffees it's very easy to calculate what my

consumption of coffee should have been what my consumption of milk should have been what my consumption of sugar shab be you know and you get a little tolerance levels but but it's very very easy to tell that you have to be able to be very diligent in your Audits and stopke keeping right your bar inventory needs to be tallied every night you cannot afford to not do it your your your inventories need to be closed on the 31st of every month means they need to be closed on the whatever happens Come Rain or high water it needs to be closed your stocks need to be your first in first out methods need to be followed they need to be followed barcoding needs

to happen it needs to happen so there are there's various technology Stacks which are available right now is there a particular software you can buy that helps you do this what do what do you guys use we have so we have a system called Rista just past I use to and we use them for postem spell that how do you spell St K andpay runs it good system it's a new one but it's fairly robust and we also use the Erp system so in different kind of restaurants you need different kind of systems like I said if you don't have Sops you're dead in the water because there are so many gaps right and there are so many touch points uh for

Rista the Erp system is they also have an Erp but you don't need a sap you don't need a sap a basic material management system and that's linked to your POS and that can then identify consumption and you tally that with the sale one key thing in liquor based restaurants such as socials or fzy cafes with that have a high liquor component we at our company do a daily inventory of every single bottle of liquor every night and we have a weekly food cost report so every week we have a full food cost report opening closing consumption with a running like a realtime food cost and COG report what that does is it helps us track if there

are anomalies and the anomalies can be addressed timely if you do it twice a month half the month is over you found out to adjust it takes another week and then you're already late your food cost is are going to jump your beverage cost is going to jump so I think use the technology it's there for all the young people watching who want to get into this use the technology it's there it's cheap it's not expensive and it's easy to learn and there's enough how much does it cost I don't know the exact numbers but it's in literally a few thousands per restaurant per month a few thousands a a full um stack point of sale and inventory management system

should Cost You Less Than A lakh a year yeah few thousand per restaurant per month any hacks we use a system called barometer which is our material management system same thing like it's it's it's far easier for us because recipes are so specific as compared to alcohol yours is even better because all chemistry so 100 G of butter will always be 100 G but so we we use barometer and it's it's the same thing it's linked to your POS and then you tally it at the end of the day and one day your C is 18% I remember I remember reading a book about designing a menu long ago and I realized then I don't remember it now but designing the menu is an entire

science right like you have a anchoring bias you price dishes you want to sell in a different section ascending or descending you put prizes in a different different manner what is the science of Designing a menu and some hacks that could work in improve sales realas um a magician never reveals no okay uh um look I mean you could you could put in various you know NLP hacks in into those things and you could come up with a lot of that I think what the basic systems are what is called menu engineering where you basically figure out what are the things things that are your stars which means that they they're

moving fast and you're getting a decent margin which is acceptable what are your dogs right which are where there are no margins and there no sales what are your workhorses means that you're getting enough volume but they're little lower on on profitability and how do you position the menu in a manner that what you want to sell sales Moree again uh you you put you know you put your there's anchoring bias where you place your uh you know menu which is highlighted which is not highlighted now in addition to uh printed menus now we are increasingly having to become very Savvy about digital menus so you know we have to use the same um cataloging

thingss that are happening so even within restaurants now we are not giving customers physical menus we we're encouraging them to order I don't like that to I love physical menus man yeah so do I because I can't I can't get we we've stopped digital everywhere but the Millennials and the genzies they they the shutting out economy Champions they don't want uh to to look this is not true I'm a millennial I can say that but see what we're seeing on the ground level is that we're more than happy and we've seen actually we've seen higher aovs on digital menus that we seeing in printed men also the menu very interesting for

me and your menu design so our menu so firstly let me address menu design in general I think you have to look at it in two different ways one is casual dining restaurants like most of us here are are involved in and then there is the qsr the qsr is actually a science where they realize where the cashier is standing the TV screen above him is the first one to get the eyeballs so he's the most expensive or the combos will be there the burger the single burger which is the lowest value adding product for them is literally stuck in the right corner there's a literal book written on how McDonald's developed this system of human psychology you working with

psychologists to figure out where should they display what in order to enhance aov because they're working on smaller aovs I think in a my father has spent a lot of time building this he always believed in starting with being India the vegetarian section first and going in an ascending order so lowest to highest so the most expensive product is at the bottom of that particular section simply because when people read the menu you don't want to see a 2,000 rupee dish straight at the top you're immediately turned off this restaurant is too expensive let opposite of the anchoring bi you're talking correct but

in a in a restaurant in a casual dining or a fine dining restaurant it has to work the other way but that's assuming you scan the menu once yeah yeah no if you can scan if you're always going to scan the menu a couple of times before you make up your mind your anchor can be downstairs as well yeah that's true and and again like I said qsr and CDR and FDR are three different things so when you're going to a restaurant like a Indian accent or a or you know one of his saltwater grills or premium restaurants you're going to see uh a different kind of consumer not necessarily entirely is the is the purchase decision based on price and

vegetarianism why I do that is because I feel that this one country and again I'm talking about Indian restaurants in general I'm not necessarily talking about like uh you know an Asian restaurant or Italian restaurant um when you go as a family it's just more comforting to see a Dal MC or a pan MC or something like that because 45 % of all consumers that come to my restaurants are naturally vegetarian which why is that I I read 80% 79% of India is non-vegetarian it is it is I don't know the number is that high I don't if the number is that most of sou indan PAB is 49% vegetarian guab is the highest highest vegetariana is the

highest no Punjab really 49% and you won't believe Arana I thought the number is 65% or something vegetarian I don't know I i' I've read numbers that are 49% for Punjab being number the most and the most nonvegetarian is Kerala Goa West Bengal you know Kaka Tamil NAD Dial line that's running across India it's not it's not a it's not a horizontal line from the Northeast to to Goa in that sense there's a diagonal line and I think you know south and east is more is nonvegetarian rice consuming and north and and West tends to be a little bit more vegge bread basket and that comes for me it's more about how the display fridge looks MH um that's what

works for us so it's you eat with your eyes first where you position what um do you do also do smell cuz a lot of new age coffee shops are doing that do that yeah I mean that's how Cinnabon like yeah you know they perfume outside the studio that Cinnabon smell in any and the McDonald's french fries smell Yeah we actually have an experimented with smell but that's a great idea as well so I'm taking away the 300 rupee macaron and adding smell great yeah and who do you guys use for menu designing we do it fully internally 100% internally we have an agency that we work with who do you use there an agency called starting Monday starting Monday

yeah and we see we trying to do everything that can help a guy starting a restaurant right H who do you use yeah through ch ch is it doing a good job that's a good segue actually is a helping you guys in any way many way helping us in in many ways develop dishes uh yeah actually wow I mean if you if you have a concept so the way we work with chefs right we we I mean and we kind of together kind of you know okay uh let's make a menu with on grammar right can you make an alliteration can you make a metaphor can you make an oxyon or uh can you make a menu on bandra or can you make uh thing like that so when

you we are basically conceptualizing and this is a really good excise that we kind of get into and then when you're trying to construct it and build this right the certain keywords going into AI helps chefs also be able to also present their ideas in in in a better in a better manner right and that that helps me you really pushing it to the extent we have just started using it to be honest we just there a video camera in your your restaurant which is recording eating behaviors and reactions of people consuming the food that's a lot of data collection right we are using our C doing that with their students in all their schools we use our cameras to do

uh table heat mapping uh We've so uh so for example we like to see which are the tables that people like to sit at which are the tables that get fill first camera Technologies helping us do that and what is the likely we are we are we are getting to see uh we're getting table counts we're getting to see male versus uh female ratios uh in in our restaurants we are not listening in on them and we're not reading their lips or we are seeing their expressions uh yet that's something that we're going to do that's what we have our our servers because they how do you use what software do you use for this Sorry video Javis I think we use Javis do you guys

as a app we don't use table mapping uh but we using AI very extensively not for menu generation but for image creation for even copyrighting MH okay and um we're using it also for videos R I've heard in our research that you're big on design and design is a very big element from the time you had a coffee shop called mocha I've actually been there you had one in kangla back in the day I think like a decade ago how do you go about we all established that ambian says if not as important as food it is very important how do you go about designing the Interiors of a restaurant uh how do you budget for it some hacks around that for somebody

starting off I think the design starts with how do you want your uh how do you want your guest to feel right do you want them to feel uh elegant do you want them to feel sophisticated do you want them to feel at home do you want them to feel comfortable do you want them to uh to feel like they're transported into a magical land right I mean I can have the same cup of coffee which I'm holding uh you know either I can hold it like this right which is a different thing I can hold it like this or I can hold it like as a cuddle mug and all these things are very tactile that actually go a very long way in how

you feel things that you can feel touch you know all materials have a temperature they have a a texture right and it it conveys something leather conveys something right velvet convey something it's it's feel and then of course you want you want the experience to be in the same cord you want uh you want to feel that particular way so how do you get somebody to feel more sophisticated how do you get somebody to feel a little bit more elant how do you get somebody to feel like okay you know you can come here in your flip flops and they're all starts with design and I think um whether we like it or not everything is designed whether we we we

call it designed or not I worked with raz's uh friend very good friend ayaz for the design of my Cafe when we did in Kaba beautiful brother it was it was such a beautiful process the whole thing working with him um and the the you know initially he asked me he's like close your eyes visualize if you could visualize your space as a person who what would that person be and you know when we were talking about he was at a young Shan connary and I said no no no no no it's Monica beluchi and that's when you know then you got the little feminity you got the spad you got you got the final touches so I think it's it's about

understanding what the final feel of the place should be like design I think the place do you guys personally get involved now after all this growth do you still partake in the design element of a new restaurant I'd be out of a job if I didn't like I said 10 years AG ago I would have spent less time or I would say like a third of what I do now so design has become just so important to the worldall experience it's no longer just about the food or the drink or design dictates how you feel does it make you feel good does it make you feel luxurious does it make you feel comfortable does it make you feel

relaxed so many things are dictated entirely by the design of the space I don't I think I have a decent aesthetic sense but I like to rely on these really talented people I think design has become so important that you have to have access to great people like them to be able to build these beautiful spaces because they can think in a way that at least a person like me can simply not and they bring that extra D the fourth dimension in a way you you want somebody who's going to come to you with a genuinely thought out design with purpose with origin you know with with with Direction you don't want somebody coming to you with a mood board from

Pinterest right because that is what design has been reduced to now you see something which is trending on Pinterest you can bet your life that 3 months later you're going to see 40 Restaurants which are going to look exactly the same my first ever store in like the proper first store in bandra I remember the day I signed it I went with my friend pratish who runs company called starting Monday and we went to a cafe and he turned the the the menu upside down and he said close your eyes and describe your store and I described it and as I described it he drew it out and then we took that to a friend's dad who was an architect and said can you please

replicate that and then we actually have the picture of the drawing with the store next to it like lovely so I feel so I feel like it's not you know don't be you don't need um too much sometimes sometimes you just need to know what you really want absolutely sometimes just a clever use of paint uh and and you know just uh the right kind of shade of sofa or upholstery that's the magic you don't need anything else a lot of people said ugc they talk about ugc like the Holy Grail uh user generated content they say to get through virality you need to have user generated content how do you incentivize or trigger an audience to do

that so for example in our padum store we have three giant macaroons stacked against each other and it's just everyone who enters that store just takes a picture with it like we don't ask them to we don't say stand here take a picture but they walk in and do you incentivize for them taking a picture and tagging you we don't actually Instagram is a tool to be harnessed so a few years ago being instagrammable was very important I think the world has moved on see there there are Cycles in everything the restaurant industry has a cycle shorter than any other industry every 6 months food taste change design taste change in

entire you know the entire Vibe around a certain you know area changes entire markets change so I think uh the Cycles are smaller in our industry than perhaps even in the fashion industry any other ideas around I think uniqueness definitely is what what gathers attention I mean that scientifically that's what we're designed to do we we we process a lot less information than we are receiving right so novelty is one great uh you know way of actually would you add one novelty based it definitely is definitely a thumb stoer it definitely is I think one of think those days are gone I think no longer is no required

when I went to Japan now I think my whole list was an Instagram fil list of like all these like matcha filled drinks and like food yes I'm talking about from a design perspective from a design perspective I think being instagrammable food or design I mean both for you food I think the more unique it is the more effort you put into the presentation that's going to be forever that see one the larg of liquid nitrogen till it got banned till it got banned the came and had a sip of the liquid nitrogen one of my restaurant and uh we had to get it repaired he was kind enough to not let it out in the public till today is that

a good there's a hole in my soul that you need to fill to we how great food Louis burger with gold on it I'll give you that is that going to be an increasingly important element drama to make a restaurant work used to be uh to get eyeballs in the beginning I think or to continue when fzy Cafe opened uh 20145 uh 2014 end um it was important to have all this drama tableside theatrics Molecular Gastronomy since then fzy Cafe has done a 180 in the sense that with cycle of things the term Molecular Gastronomy has been in a way bastardized uh people are not using it to the full potential and just using you know some of this drama

but not to effect they're doing it as a theat as a theatrical thing not really helping the dish itself so like I said um the TBL side drama has diminished but people still love some form of interesting action dynamism the correct word would be dynamism happening around their food I think people enjoy that but it's lost its importance it's not important anymore to get eyeballs I think the only one thing that'll forever work for a restaurant and for it to grow organically is word of mouth and that is the Holy Grail that is a culmination of culmination of everything so things have to be remarkable right people have to find something to be able to remark

about it's very organic so why while you can remove the bells and whistles from like you know there's no need to basically send a post box with a burger inside or you know put put a drink in a bird cage or whatever all that is is I think that is but having good theater is very important right so how uh a great matri D for example is is phenomenal for a restaurant right it's worth their weight and gold something that'll get the remarkable thing going where they will feel the need to actually tell their friend that this is what they've experienced I think if you have a really good meal or experience somebody you

want to share it with your friends right like you go out you have a great meal someone's asking you for recommendation where should I go but things like referals don't work they do referals will work like incen if they're coming from a clean space if they see motivated then they're not going to work but people are smart enough to realize that word of mouth is not a simple thing it's a culmination of a 100 different things service the temperature the quality of the napkin the table wear the food the drink how soft were people there's a big difference between service and Hospitality service is

simply the aspect of taking a drink and putting it on the table Hospitality dictates how you made that Patron feel and I think that's a very big thing and and and this is something that you know um my I think arguably the greatest restaurer in the world has been harping on about for for years on his new book unreasonable Hospitality talks about it but it's something very deep what is the name of that book everybody should read unreasonable Hospitality it talks exactly about this I think the question is how do you get that how do you get people to talk about it like the culmination of all this you know but oh you know this is a great restaurant

everything is fantastic but what is that one thing that there is no one thing no there is they can be they can be that oh you like I said that builds water mouth it could a single there's so many restaurants I go to for one dish one dish one that one dish is enough you know sometimes restaurant built their entire for Generations have survived on one dish how how important is a chef and because he becomes so Cardinal to the business how do you maintain the right Bond where you don't a lead him on or be put him in a position of power if you're a restaurant owner that he can leave and and kill the restaurant if he likes how do you how do you negotiate

Chef relationships hacks I mean I'm the I am the chef so if you were to franchise and have another Chef or if you were to open a branch and have another Chef what do you think you would do honestly I think it's and I've seen this with friends with different restaurants where the chef was the main ingredient and then moved on and the restaurants continue to do really well doing better after they've gone and in some cases not in some cases not I just feel that it's um um for me it would just be it's it's more about the product than than the

chef um I think it again you know I think that um I think we've all had experiences where we've put our faith in chefs and we've nurtured them and we've given them everything that they've asked for and and at some point of time they've gone looking for a better opportunity for for for a few I think that sometimes that does break your heart I think sometimes that does uh make you feel that you know what screw that I'm not going to do a chef based restaurant again but sometimes when you can really really really know how to handle the diva and make the diva really perform to the best of the capabilities there's a different

magic in that so again depending on you know the kind of restaurant you want to do um there are some restaurants where you know people are going to come and you know they will Kiss the Ring of the chef because that is what they're coming for and some they will come for the brand I think that if you if you decided um to to work with a chef who is a diva in you know like a virtual so a Sant in respect then you will have to be able to be sensitive to to their sensitivities so actually when when I had the Kaba Cafe I had a friend of mine who was Colombian and came to to work as the head chef and a lot of it was driven by him you

know the place became about him and a lot of the people that came came for him and then when he left I was in that position where I was like oh my God our people going to come back but in fact our sales just grew after um so I feel like it's um um you know it's it's kind of funny in that manner where if you it is bit sweet I think that I think look I think when a symbiotic is beautiful but I think that no one organization or one person is bigger than the sum of the parts yeah I think okay guys Staffing where do you hire restaurant staff from and is there anything in particular you can do to retain that stuff are there any hacks in

this industry R you want to go first um I think that uh uh we have fortunately I think Word of Mouth as a good employer is very very important referrals for us are the number one recruitment Source um we encourage our staff to bring us more staff that is the shortest and fastest way of of getting good quality people of course you need to have a robust training program uh you need to know okay you know what do you want to put somebody on the floor what can you do to get them on the floor what are the basic skills they need I am not a big believer in um in education I think is completely

a waste of time in in the hospitality business when you say education you mean any kind of degree in the hospitality industry it's it's the thanks sorry it's my sorry no I okay so I okay so I think it means for front of our stuff May mean I don't mean for shifts um you know FCI ncia and kumu of course bring a certain sensibility but when it comes to General stuffff I we are really not looking at the institutions we're looking more more at the pedigree of the institutions that they have worked because then you can really tell you know where they're going to come from you know that ocld which is the overo school of Learning and Development pass out is going to be of a

certain cut so firstly I think you select people you should hire people that get pleasure in giving others pleasure how do you do that it is absolutely based on it is absolutely based on a good Talent acquirer somebody who do you use we have in- housee we have obviously we use the talent acquirer uses portals and uses number one thing is always going to be referral you said your head hunters higher from no not even Head Hunter so we call them Talent acquirers so they use a multitude of things I think the number one method is always going to be like you said referrals because these are people that have already seen the work culture

they've seen how it is to work in that particular position um what are the benefits Etc right and that's what is our number one methodology but having a good talent acquirer who is able to ensure that the tick marks are ticked in a certain kind of person like I said a person who gets pleasure uh by giving pleasure I think you know a person who feels happiness when he gives pleasure to others I think that's a very very good uh you know virtue to have is there a mechanism to do that like if I have to hire 100 people and there is a filter I want to put in place it's interview process you have to call them over you have to meet

them you have to figure out if they fit within the culture of your organization and how do you keep them keeping is the is the harder part benefits no approachability and accessibility to yourself if you're HR not it'll be hard for the founder of the company to do that if you have an HR and a management system a hierarchy not just at the HR level but also at the Restaurant level that is highly accessible and approachable then that'll have a huge impact in making sure that your retention rates are high now in typically in the qsr the retention rates in fact the attrition rates are over 100% so you're talking about 120%

attrition which means more people in a year in a set finite period leave the organization then actually join MH whereas in the CDR space if you're between 30 40% it's good so um I think just be there for them have policies that empathetic have a listening year have an HR and a management system within the restaurant so the first Port of Call is always going to be the manager there has to be some basic empathy training with the managers they have to have uh they have to also be able to impart culture I think building culture is more difficult than building competence MH you can build competence into a person you if they're not trained

you can train them how you going to build culture that comes through a concerted effort from every level of hierarchy Puja uh um when I started it was basically just getting people from again referrals started with a small team trained them and then as we started growing it was through agencies that specialized in Hospitality graduates also schools are a which agency is good who do you use um there are a couple um not sure of their names exactly you don't get front of house stuff though no but for kitchen and stuff for for us as well like just going directly to schools and uh recruiting directly that helps yeah c.com is.com is great.com and c.com

is specializing in um Hospitality in hospitality is that who you use I do use C and for us LinkedIn works really well ledin does work well okay next question a new one that's come out there's a new one that's come out by Rashmi called Hospitality hope which is really good so website yeah it's a website started by database that is the that's that's actually the best she's not taking a single rupe she's doing this you know as her she's a very prolific writer and she's getting really good talent hooked up with International uh restaurants of real good repute so Hospitality hope if you're looking to go abroad MH much to our detriment uh Hospitality hope is the

place but I just saying that but you cannot retain everybody and I know that always is in the hospital business is the best server who will have the drinking problem or the guy who's going to go and disappear for days on end not sure but you have to be able to recognize them first and once you recognize them you got to reward them and then the way to retain them is to tell them that look we see you MH we've spotted youh we are going to put you on a track we're going to put you on a journey mhm 3 years from now this is where you're going to be mhm 5 years from now this is where you're going to be and you stick with us 7

years from now that's where you're going to be is that key and then deliver showing them a path of growth you have to show them and you have to show them a path of grow because otherwise they there will always be if buts is it primarily Financial growth or is it a growth of stature it is both it is it is both it is a growth in in your designation as well as growth in salary what is the bigger trigger emotionally look emotionally you know having the designation of a manager is a big deal having the the designation of an executive or executive is a big deal and people want that they want to be able to know that they are you know in

in a position of authority but at the end of the day that doesn't fill your stomach alone you need to be able to have cash service charge goes a very long way in making sure that we can retain our talent ensuring that you know it's distributed they benefit from the company that builds team working uh as said a very strong culture really really helps because they know that this is a family and this Collective responsibility you can't let each other down so these things cumulatively add up but at the end of the day this is what I've learned from the chatties and the UDP restaurant I'm from there by the way that that is you cannot break a Shetty

restaurant guy why because he knows he's dishwashing today if he puts his nose to the ground if he does the hard yards 10 years from now he'll be managing his own restaurant 15 years from now he'll be a partner he knows it right and this they have a beautiful system where they send money home uh to the wives and to the mothers they take care of the kids education they take care of all the medical needs these guys are given a place to stay and a little bit of pocket money but this system is fantastic and there's a lot to learn but the important thing is that a clear path career path is given to them that if you do this and if you stay this

long this is where you will go and that is good enough for them it is the uncertainty of of you know that progression uncertainty of where they will be a couple of years from now is what causes unrest in my opinion makes sense uh festivals seasonal stuff if I were to be starting a restaurant today as a 22-year old how do I incorporate that into my business plan is it a big part for us yes Christmas Diwali yeah so we start with I mean for us season actually starts in September mhm uh um August actually start with raki and then you go to ganpati at least in Bombay you have ganpati then you have Diwali then you

have Christmas then you have Valentine's Day and then you have holy and then after that it's a little bit of a slow and then this whole season is also a big season for like weddings parties people are doing caterings so we do a lot of that and then April to se uh April to July is kind of like a little bit slow so we have to figure out what we do during those months so see seasonality at least with us is quite important and for you guys as well it's a big thing seasonality so there are two different things one is I think your question was also regarding festivities right India is a deeply spiritual country um there are many festivals that happen that have

a direct impact on the business of your restaurant or delivery service MH for example you have ganpati in Bombay when you have ganpati in Bombay you're going to see a reduction in dining out you're going to see a reduction in non-wage consumption you're going to see a reduction in alcohol consumption people are going to not go out as much when you have navatra in North India you have a major reduction in the number of people going out non-w consumption goes down very sharply right so I think there are two different things seasonality affects everybody equally uh festivals affect certain kinds of restaurants a vegetarian restaurant would be less

impacted during navratras in North India whereas a non-er restaurant or or a bar would get more deeply impacted uh these are just the realities of being in the country you have to to mitigate this by in a sense planning in advance coming up with special things like a navatra Tali or um better offers better deals during these specific times and these tiny things can significantly throw up revenues right they can mitigate I don't think they can throw I don't think they can completely resolve the the you know the impact or you know completely absorb the impact they definitely can mitigate to a large extent and it's it's just the reality of being in a country like India

where there are um festivals that have a huge impact on the socio economic fabric s that will have um an impact on your business directly and as a result you're going to have to mitigate in some way shape or form okay so at the end of this podcast uh did I miss anything guys I think um but firstly you've covered everything there is a crash course in restauran thing took us years to do this you just gave everybody the low down um I think you can charge a lot of money for this podcast if you were to monetize it 7our podcast 7 hours 7 hours 7 hours okay six hours six hours at the end we had great K we had for another

two hours and then I go amazing macarons with some amazing coffee h can we please talk about that please plug in a part of the video you you have plug it in plug it in plug it the one that I'm looking good we have to talk about this yeah we are talking about it the recording have we done no no such thing j my god do you still dance so I dance extremely poorly on TV I don't know how I wasal TV on National so I'll tell you what I learned out of this whole thing wait before you tell me what you learned out of it what made you do it

my wife my son was adamant against it because he thought my being on that show and being the foolish dancer that I am will make a fool out of him in his school my wife said you've always been the kind of guy who's taken on these kind of tough things that you you're not comfortable with things that are out of your comfort zone that's the only reason I did it the obviously other reason was to be on a large scale TV show let's be very honest about it by being on that show and I hadn't done Master Chef I had done Master Chef in 2016 so like several I've done other stuff but not of relevance this was a fairly large show I took it on as a challenge I even now

don't know how to dance well but I had the best choreographer who put her her life energy into me she tried her best and the only reason I survived almost half that well actually half that show was because I felt a sense of responsibility towards suchitra so big shout out to suchitra you're like a rock star I love you I'm going to see you in bumbay very soon she's my sister she and her husband were my choreographer ERS they were the wind beneath my wings literally and they were able to extract something out of me that I simply did not know I had and to this day I think it's simply a testament to her efforts number one and be my ability to not give

a damn nice I think that's the coolest thing not giving beautiful that's beautiful right absolutely I would have the petrii I'll do you would natur yeah you do you're natural you're doing Master listen proves it okay so this show uh is meant solely as an exercise in education for entrepreneurs we've all been lucky uh to help other people be in the right position to get lucky we build this content and and you know thank you guys for flying down to Bangalore and spending the amount of time you have uh I think this will be incredibly useful to so many many young people who want to start a

restaurant another thing we do is we don't have any uh sponsors we don't do any advertising and at the end of every show we try and do uh should I call it a good deed I don't know but we we kind of like do something to pass the Baton along and help somebody else uh in the last episode for example we decided to fund a young entrepreneur trying to build a business in fashion or in cosmetics or in home decor who's under the age of 22 23 uh so I'd like to suggest that we come together and fund a young uh boy or girl which we will all pick together we'll open out applications and you'll get thousands of them what and uh we will fund someone

who's unlikely to get funding otherwise let's say below the age of 22 good yeah chers to that yeah you know yeah and the only thing I would ask so that we can put it out is is there amount of money you would like to allocate to that young individual so we can put it out and we can get applications definitely happy to um help you know some young restaurant to get their feet of the ground make sure they have a safe landing you know Point them in the right direction and Mentor outside of money yeah guide yeah all of that yeah all of that my Instagram do you think is AAG p is open I'm not allowed to invest

other restaurants I don't I don't think in my personal capacity in my personal capacity not allowed to do that sorry any any amount amount does yeah okay whatever you suest what are you looking for I'm in uh should we do say young kid starting a restaurant how much money would he need 50 lakhs enough to give a moon shot together yeah 50 LX he won't be able to build a big restaurant to be very honest why not look at even a cloud kitchen potential yeah should we restaurant is going to cost more than that okay I'll I'll do let me start it off and say I'll do 25 lakhs okay you guys can tell me an amount it doesn't

have to be big or small just something random number we'll summ it up and we'll find a kid I'm very happy to Mentor as much as I can I'm not physically allowed to invest in in other I'm not physically allowed to invest but I'm going to personally perhaps in my personal capacity do it I'll give about 15 yeah 10 okay 50 that's 50 and we will Mentor him with time and I I have less to add here but you guys have so much skill set in this but it'll be an interesting project we'll find this one young talented kid absolutely and we'll see what we can make of it yeah yeah yeah good which um according to you which

will go best with your coffee yeah uh passion for fashion food I don't have but the sea salt will go really well but te or Citrus one this one yeah the sea salt will go really well then not lavender not Rose I have a question why do I have one macaron less sure they thought you needed one less okay come on start uh Z no no no he's always his never been afraid of uh but depend don't makees so we're going to make you we're going to make you uh touch one item and tell us what it is smell one item and tell us what it is and taste one item and tell us what it is well you're

blindfold really weird this one you just smell oh my God smells like AAR M AAR I don't know AAR my God it is merar I'm kidding me it's like a biscuit or something or broke it's a biscuit it's a bis biscuit which one I don't P I don't know yeah is it yeah it is yeah kidding me did you make a cheesecake with it I make a cheesecake out of par at FY Cafe okay and the last one you to taste he can see guys he taste is easy for me he can see you can eat that KitKat taste is my speciality not bad citrella rose water water dude I will lose everything rose water taste it better be a grasshopper

or something it's red ants oh that's slimy [Laughter] je does it have bad [Music] juice why can't he eat it be no way bro bro come on b banana banana man every time you said Indian I was drinking Jee so weird what is that is that an insect is it like are they baby Co no Anar yeah got it pomegranate next elii you're giving her all ingredients she uses you know that right every day you have to tast can I say

that yeah you taste what giving like chne nice both of us got all three can I do it in one second give me just smell cinnamon not bad okay taste tast if you guys have given me something weird no see tomorrow lemon what is [Music] you perverted welcome to FNB action one second hold on okay hey guys I know this is not n okay but we put in a lot of effort for this show for you

guys to watch it for free and you guys don't even subscribe to it subcribe such a great team we have we have Magna we have VI we have kagra we have Ali and we have rudra these guys make the food he takes care of the logistics these guys are the backbone of the entire thing and then there's just me imitating nikil da and Abit who are not here but who also help a lot also everybody loves the food yeah so we have kagra and Ali doing that so please like follow come on 3 2 it's 3 a.m. you got to