"Food Experience Should Be Consistent"

Biplob Banerjee works with Jubilant Foodworks, which is the master franchise of Domino's pizza & Dunkin' Donut for India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. An engineer and an MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur, he has a total of 22 years' experience with companies like PepsiCo, GECIS, GSK earlier. A certified coach and fitness enthusiast, he loves music and adventure sports. At JFL, he looks after HR, CSR and Admin for a workforce of 28,000 employees.

How do you create experience at your restaurant?

We have 1100 restaurants in 260 countries and our product is quite popular from early age to adult age. So every customer comes with a new expectation and our challenge is to fulfil that. For us, food experience revolves around one key theme which is taking care of customer in the best way possible. Restaurateurs need to think if the customers are receiving the value from the product, be it ambience, food, menu, service and price. Our consistent theme is based on customer’s need. They are spoiled for choices so restaurateurs have to make sure to produce what they stand for and what their brand promises.

How do you maintain the same consistency in all the 1100 outlets?

It is a huge investment in terms of people, energy and of course capital and we do not short cut on anything. We have our special team which is divided into two parts, one focuses on product and other on customer service. We invest in people; we have a training ace at each restaurant which focuses 80 per cent on training and 20 per cent on delivery. Employers think that their work ends with hiring people only but the way you train them plays important role. Our parent company has global audit function and they keep sending people suddenly to keep an eye on the quality and consistency.

How have you seen QSR segment growing over the past few years?

Apart from the statistics, this industry is growing at a phenomenal rate but the caution is that it is the game of scaling up. There is a huge challenge when it comes to present the brand at national or international level. There are many successful players in different regions but the question is if they can scale up their business on another level altogether. If they can then this industry has wide scope to develop.

What are the evolving trends in this particular segment?

Consumer adoption is changing at a very high rate and we are a country which is popularly divided into India and Bharat. Thus, there are different set of consumers expecting different every time and we as a brand have to maintain that balance. Not going over bored and keep an eye on what will work is the new trend.

What to keep in mind to make the brand global?

Many entrepreneurs who have entered Indian market already have that experience. The secret behind that is ‘leadership’. Leadership in terms of character and competence where character stands for vision and competence for decision. If one has the patience and integrity for the brand then scaling it globally is not a juggernaut.

 
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