No Wanton Plan, This
Undercooked
A major reason no Indian sit-down restaurant player has scaled up is a lack of processes. The ability to deliver is limited. “In the mid-level to fine-dining restaurant business, you need a system delivered operation. Right now, people don’t have that in place,” says Akerkar.
And SRPL requires very strong systems. For instance, a lot of ingredients and all the sauces for Mainland China are imported. All the fish for Oh! Calcutta outlets are flown in from Kolkata. When these brands go into the mini-metros, will they be able to continue to deliver? Chatterjee believes so. “We started off expanding slowly. In 1999-2000, we did three [restaurants]. Then it was four a year and then five. Now we are trying for 18. We have the experience and the processes are stream-lined. We just have to continue to do the same on a larger scale.”
A restaurant is only as good as its people. Even if one chef or a small team of cooks leaves, the quality of a restaurant could suffer. Employee turnover is quite high in this business. SRPL has opened a catering institute to combat this problem: Mainland Institute of Oriental Catering at Salt Lake, Kolkata, to train and re-train employees according to its specifications. The institute has 250 students. And the place supplies staff to all his restaurants. The training is important for the staff as their appraisals are linked to how well they perform during their training sessions.
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Image: Malay Karmarkar
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Apart from processes, fine-dining restaurants have to deliver an experience rather than just a meal. “If a restaurant can make Rs. 800 on an average bill, then the margins can be 20-25 percent, else they drop to 10-15 percent. Also, very few locations in India are both lunch as well as dinner places. So a restaurant has to make its money from one dining occasion,” says Milind Kothare, CEO, mKons Consulting, a hospitality consulting company.
Till last year, getting high bill values was not that difficult. With the slowdown this year, one of the first things people cut down is eating out. Chatterjee says most visitors to his restaurants have kept coming, though there has been a drop in the corporate business. “Last year, there was madness on corporate tables. In one table, there were five imported wine bottles. The man has got equity, he thinks it’s not my money, it’s the fund’s money, so udao. That mindlessness has stopped,” he laughs.
Getting Them to Pay
Each patron at a Mainland China outlet in Mumbai pays Rs. 425 on an average. This sort of billing enables most of SRPL’s restaurants break even within six to eight months, Rajesh Mohta, general manager for finance and accounts, says. And 80-85 percent of the current restaurants are profitable. Will tier-II towns pay that kind of money?
Indigo’s Akerkar thinks so. “There’s certainly money in tier-II cities. There’s a lot of potential waiting to be tapped. Anjan will have prime mover advantage and if he can maintain his superior quality over time, there’s no reason for him to beat existing restaurants,” he says.
Chatterjee adds, “They will pay for quality. Of course we may have to adjust tastes. But we have done that in metros as well. If we serve slightly thick rice, they say what the ****, we are paying so much money and this! Indians like basmati rice. Basmati ka fried rice, you just can’t change.”
Chatterjee looks for opportunities everywhere. And he tells interesting stories. Sigree, the north Indian chain, actually serves pre-partition era dishes. He picked them up from Gafur miya, a chef in Lahore, when he had gone there for a cricket match. He got the recipe for dab chingri, a dish from Bangladesh, for Oh! Calcutta. “I met a 78-year-old lady in Chittagong, Bangladesh for the recipe. One of the finest moments of my life. This lady at home, someone’s granny, extremely difficult to deal with but she chatted with me and made some dab chingri for me. And it was very important for me. Because after her the recipe will be extinct. No book writes it,” he says.
Years ago, Chatterjee’s Situations Advertising had come up with the Aaya naya Ujala, chaar boondon wala jingle to make the clothes whitener a household name. At the time Ujala was competing with Reckitt and Coleman’s established Robin Blue.
This time Chatterjee has the first mover advantage. He has to replicate his successful model when others are standing still. This has the makings of a very yummy story.
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