India being such a large market 90 per cent of the overall market is still standalone chains and most of the businesses either have one or two outlets. So, How do I take those outlets to the next level, how do I grow it, what sort of differentiation do I create are some important aspect when one wants to expand their businesses beyond the four walls.
Innovation is not just limited to food, menu or service but innovation is also about customer experience. We do lots of fun activities to keep customers coming back.
Innovation is the Key: Innovation is not just limited to food, menu or service but innovation is also about customer experience. Restaurants these days do lots of fun activities to keep customers coming back to them again and again. “When we started Sassy Spoon in Nariman Point we started it as a fine dine restaurant but four years later when we thought of starting it in Pune and saw the demographic over there we find that the target audience was very different from the kind of target audience we had for fine dine in Mumbai. So, we have to tweak our offerings and price points as per the Pune market,” shared Rachel Goenka of the Chocolate Spoon Company that owns Sassy Spoon. This is not enough, the young restaurateur came back to Mumbai tweaked their offerings, increased seating options by catering to a wider customer base and that’s how they have grown from being a fine dining to a premium casual restaurant. “When we entered the Pune market we knew that innovation was important but localization and innovating it as per that market was more important,” she added.
It’s all about Great Food and Service: The fundamental to restaurant business is still great food and great service and it still stays organic. The top two reasons with diners are still dining with family and relatives. “People enjoy your meal, get the comfort and that’s where they are coming back and back and that’s give them the confidence in the brand. So, when you are ready to scale, always meet your customer expectation,” said Reynold Fernandes, COO, FoodLink Services.
It’s Important to Associate with Brand: “When we invested in Faasos in 2014 it was a network of QSRs and the average AOV was 200 rupees. One challenge for us at that point was how do we increase the AOV and take it to Rs 300. We launched higher value products like pizza etc but it didn’t work as customer set an expectation of associating a brand by serving a particular kind of food. That’s when we asked our customer have you seen Faasos restaurant and the reply was obviously not. That’s when we realized that a front-end footprint to grew at a large scale and since then we have opened more than 200 network of a dark store across 13 cities in India,” points Varun Verma, Associate, Lightbox Ventures.
Restricting Travel: “Earlier, customer would love to travel across and go to faraway places to dine and check out concepts. Right now, what happened is that every pocket has a bunch of restaurant which has restricted you to travel and save from higher traffic,” says Hitesh Keswani, Founder & Director, Silver Beach Entertainment & Hospitality as going to neighborhood works for people and that’s what they have started opting for.
Get your Backend fixed: Before you think of scaling your business your backend has to be so simplified that it is ctrl+c and ctrl+v and that’s when it is going to help you in scaling up when you to one outlet to multiple outlet.
