Restaurant India conference and awards has set a benchmark among restaurant fraternity for building a world class show on the business of restaurants in India. After 9 successful on ground editions, this year the group entered to cities by doing the city editions. The first city edition was successfully done in Chennai in April followed by even much successful edition earlier this July in Mumbai and now ‘Restaurant India Conference and Awards’ in Hyderabad on 21st July at ITC Kohenur.
Known for its rich cultural and food heritage, Hyderabad has always been considered as a foodie city and has witnessed local as well as international chains coming up with new and innovative concepts. Going by the industry analysis, Restaurant India Conference focused on talking about ‘creating and building 21st century restaurant’ and how evidence based trend has changed the way we have been consuming food for ages. Here are top 5 findings that we got from the sessions and debates:
Product is ‘Hero’: There is no denying that how fancy a restaurant looks, if your product is not impressive, you die. Product has always been a key for the success of any business and same goes for restaurants. “I truly believe that a brand run on a product, it should have a hero product and work like a commercial movie,” shared Neehar Bisabathini, Founder at Chuurolto by adding that one more thing that a menu require is consistency. He also believed that a restaurant should innovate only 20-30 per cent of the menu so that the customer always finds something new, unique on the menu and rest 70-80 per cent of the menu should remain same.
Digital is here to stay: The future of menu looks very digital, its pictorial, it’s video based…showing what goes on, into a product, process. According to panellists gone are days of 10 page menu with text written on them and hence restaurants need to change them with pictorial, video-based menu. Also, locally sourced is one big thing that has emerged.
Plant-based is a choice: According to Chef Dharmender Lamba of Trident Hyderabad, “There’s no compulsion of putting plant-based items on the menu. If the customer wants plant-based options restaurants can have it in the menu. “It’s picking up more for the metro but less for tier-1 and tier-2 cities but people are getting aware and they want more of it. It’s fashion,” added Lama.
Riding on the uniqueness: “There’s lot of shift between human intervention and technology. Everybody has moved to the comfort zone because of the pandemic and people are ordering from Swiggy/Zomato but if you are going to bring the customer back into the restaurant is biggest challenge unless you are not going to give them a different, unique, entertainment etc. ,” added Rama Raju Singam of Vistan Nextgen.
Hygiene is on top: The pandemic has made us little bit aligned, a lot of improvement that happened in the best practices existed before at least in the hotel. “The pandemic has brought the awareness especially when we talk about hygiene. When we travel abroad, one difference that we always find is that the hygiene level especially in the west is so high as compared to our country. And, after the pandemic a great awareness has come about it and I think that has been a blessing for us. One think more that I have noticed as a best practice is that people, things have become more agile, they have become faster in responses, faster in their products out. So, I think the pandemic has made us realise that if you are not fast you would die,” added Shivneet Pohoja, Executive Chef, ITC Kohenur.
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