How this Andhra Restaurant has created a Food Storm in Bengaluru

Shweta Ravi was born into the family of entrepreneurs who already were running the Andhra restaurant Nandhana Palace in Bengaluru. After completing her graduation from Stella Maris in Chennai and she moved to England doing Masters in Finance from Warwick University and trained at various hotels there. A sturdy visionary, carrying the twenty five years old legacy forward using innovation as a strong code, Shweta joined the business two years back. She believes innovation is the only sustaining factor for any industry to progress.  Here are the excerpts from the interview:

Tell us something about your restaurant.

Nandhana Palace is a multi-cuisine restaurant which was started by my father Dr. R. Ravichandar. The restaurant serves Andhra style delicacies from different regions of Andhra Pradesh including Nellore, Hyderabad and the country side locations. We serve a wide variety of biryani, vegetarian and non-vegetarian delicacies.

What is your presence in the market?

We are running 13 outlets in Bengaluru which is company owned and managed by the family.

What is the average order value that you do daily as you are one of the top performing restaurants in Bengaluru?

We are known for our traditional and innovative recipes in the city. On an average we do 700-1000 meals plus 2000 biryani daily.

How have you designed the menu?

My father belongs to Andhra and he always missed the home food here in Bengaluru when he was studying. So, we have kept a mix of the cuisine from the different regions of the state. We serve traditional recipes from regions like Nellore, Guntur and Amaravati. Our Nellore Biryani is spicy and it attracts the old crowd whereas the Hyderabadi Biryani which is mild catches young crowd. We also do lots of innovation in food as we have got recipes from the regions to give it more authentic flavours. We recently sent our chefs to the Araku valley forest in Visakhapatnam to learn how to make bamboo chicken, the tribal way and much more.

Who is your target customer?

Nandhana Palace is known for serving good food. So, anyone who is in search of good Andhra food is our client. We cater to all age group including the youngsters, middle aged, the old and even the corporate crowds.

You talk a lot about innovation and experience. What are some of those experiences that you are trying to bring at your restaurant?

These days people go to a restaurant for experience and they have got an emotional connect with the brand. We at Nandhana Palace are trying to get that emotion collected. We are doing a customise biryani with the photographs of the people on it. So, that’s how we are trying to get some experience and emotion connection.

What is your expansion plan going forward?

We are coming up with two more restaurants in Bengaluru. We are also planning to expand to Chennai by next year.