FNB News - "Casual dining is preferred as India is price-sensitive"

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INTERVIEW

"Casual dining is preferred as India is price-sensitive"

Monday, 01 April, 2013, 08 : 00 AM [IST]

Massive Restaurants was launched last December targeting three segments - fine-dining, casual dining and mithai. Zorawar Kalra, founder & MD, Massive Restaurants Pvt. Ltd, explains the concept and gives details on the market to Manjushree Naik in an email interaction. Excerpts:

Tell us about Massive, your latest venture.
We launched our new venture Massive Restaurants in December last year after spending close to a year carefully studying the Indian hospitality market and researching on the untapped opportunities it offered. This venture is in partnership with India’s leading hospitality brand Mirah Hospitality lead by Gaurav Goenka, a part of the Rs 800 crore Mirah Group. Established with an aim to develop India’s premier brands of restaurants that specialises in targeting all segments of the market, the new venture will operate under three brand verticals of niche fine-dining restaurants under the signature brand name of Masala Library by Jiggs Kalra, casual dining restaurants under the brand Made in Punjab and a signature luxury sweet brand aptly named Mithai by Jiggs Kalra.

Under this you are exploring three different concepts fine dining, casual dining and mithai shops. What was the idea behind bringing three different concepts under Massive?
As mentioned above, after our exit from Wrapster Foods & Punjab Grill, we have spent close to a year evaluating and studying the Indian hospitality industry and after careful research realised that there was a serious demand for authentic, original, unadulterated restaurant concepts, especially in the North Indian cuisine and the dessert segments. More specifically with the Mithai brand, our focus is to expose Indian sweets as the first preference during festivities and occasions as compared to the use of foreign desserts. We believe that Indian sweets despite being a part of our cultural heritage for centuries are limited to just a few known varieties and have not got its due positioning in the recent culinary past of the country. With this brand, we aim at not only bringing about a change in the Indian dessert segment, but also offer patrons the true flavours of each of the items on the menu.

The Indian restaurant space, in recent years, has seen the advent of many new brands and restaurant chains, however most of them may have created a major uproar in their initial days, they have not managed to live up to the consumer’s expectations for varied reasons. With our latest offerings, our prime focus will be to offer the finest, most authentic and original recipes with a conscious effort to prepare consistent dishes across locations.

It is said that India still does not have a proper fine dining culture. How would your venture change this perception?
Indians are known to be foodies and for not being too open at experimenting with their food. It would be wrong to say that India lacks proper ‘fine-dining’ culture. Till recent years, fine-dining was a term synonymous with five star hotels in India, however, we have seen the independent restaurants sector set up a particular benchmark and clear demarcation between the casual dining and fine dining concepts. Casual dining concepts are preferred by a larger number of people as compared to fine dining concepts, largely because India is a price-sensitive market. Having said that, with the increase in disposable income, we as consumers are becoming more adventurous and don’t mind paying a little bit extra for the experience of a true fine-dine restaurant, hence the growth of this concept in recent years.

With Masala Library by Jiggs Kalra and Mithai by Jiggs Kalra, we are going to up the concept of fine-dining by offering not only a true gastronomical experience on the cuisine front but also an experience which will make our patrons return over and over again.

Tell us about the casual dining offering.
Made in Punjab, as the name suggests will focus primarily on the cuisine from, offering the flavours from one of the strongest unified sovereign province of pre-partition India, the Kingdom of Punjab. The menu will comprise of cuisines from the regions of Amritsar, Patiala, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and many of the culinary-rich cities from the erstwhile kingdom. We plan to launch the first of a chain of restaurants under this brand starting from North India and steadily expand it across the key gourmet regions of the country over the next few years, keeping it largely as a domestic brand.

There are hardly any names that are recognised nationally in the Mithai segment. So what are your plans for this segment?
Exactly. Mithai by Jiggs Kalra is a unique, first-of-its-kind dessert brand that will offer exquisite and super premium range of Indian sweets. The main focus for the brand is to expose Indian sweets as the first preference during festivities and occasions as compared to the use of foreign desserts. We believe that Indian sweets despite being a part of our cultural heritage for centuries are limited to just a few known varieties and have not got its due positioning in the recent culinary past of the country. With this brand, he aims at not only bringing about a change in the Indian dessert segment, but also offer patrons the true flavours of each of the items on the menu. The company plans on launching this brand with a key focus on the Metro and cosmopolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bengaluru and later expand it to tier II cities, with the first expected to be launched in the first quarter of this year situated at a premium location of either South Delhi or South Mumbai.

The F&B sector is witnessing lot of interest in terms of investments and joint ventures from abroad. Also the sector is experiencing consistent growth. Comment.

According to the FICCI-CIFTI & Franchise India Holdings Ltd Indian Restaurant Report 2012, the Indian restaurant industry stands at a staggering Rs 75,000 crore mark, eating-out is growing paramount. Consumers are growing affluent and aspiration-driven. With an increase in disposable income in recent years, the consumers are spending a large portion of that on leisure and entertainment as compared to what they did 10 years back. A largely unorganised sector over a decade back, the independent F&B space has grown bigger and gearing up towards getting an industry status in the coming years. A large portion of the sector is still unorganised and according to the Indian Restaurant Report 2012 is expected to grow at an average rate of 17 per cent overall in the next decade with rapidly moving towards becoming organised with the entry of international players and national / international food service brands. Apart from the fully-owned business, a large number of players are also making a shift towards the franchising route, which according to the report, is growing at a swift pace of 35 to 40 per cent per annum, to increase their market share and expand their presence both within India and internationally.

The market size of franchising sector is estimated to be Rs 35,000 crore and is likely to reach Rs 80,000 crore by 2013, according to the report. Such impressive growth figures have caught the eye of many international players and investors alike. However, with such positive numbers we need to also be cautious. In the past 5 years, we have witnessed many new entrants in the sector and I’m confident that in the next 5 – 10 years we will witness a major consolidation of many small to medium enterprises.

What will be the impact of FDI in Retail on the F&B sector?
Well, if we are to go by the reports, FDI in Retail is expected to create as many as 10 million jobs, which is brilliant. It will help us in establishing and organising this largely unorganised sector with better supply chain management, people skill development and infrastructure facilities. It will create a larger demand for professional educational institutions to develop professionals with a focus on specific skills as the demand for skilled work force will witness a drastic jump.
I for one see it as a good sign; it will expose us to international standards of service delivery and allowing us to put our best foot forward. Aside from this, we will also gain from the experience and expertise from players who are operating on an international level thereby giving us a larger platform to operate on.

What kind of business are you looking at in the coming fiscal?
We are in the process of launching our fine-dining brand Masala Library by Jiggs Kalra, with simultaneous launches happening in Delhi & Mumbai, post which we plan to launch over 10 restaurants within India and strategic international locations within the first year of operations under this brand. For our casual dining brand, Made in Punjab, we are in the process of scouting for the perfect locations in North India and will see around 5 - 6 launches under this brand in the first year of operations commencing with the first one in Delhi. Mithai by Jiggs Kalra is still at a nascent stage as we are in the process of formalising the nuances of the brand and scouting for premium locations in Delhi and Mumbai. We hope to launch 2 - 3 locations under this brand in the next one year, post which we will explore further expansion for the brand, while maintaining it’s premiumness.

Tell us about your other ventures including the one you left - Punjab Grill.
We had established Wrapster Foods Pvt. Ltd in late 2007 in a JV with Amit Burman led Lite Bite Foods Pvt. Ltd. Under the Wrapster Foods umbrella we operated two brands, namely Punjab Grill by Jiggs Kalra which is the fine-dine brand offering cuisine from the undivided Punjab province and the second was Street Foods of India which is a quick service concept serving popular dishes from all over India. Early last year, we (my father and I) sold out interest in Wrapster Foods to Lite Bite Foods and completely exited the business with the ‘Jiggs Kalra’ brand name exiting the association by end of January 2013. After our exit from Wrapster Foods, we have been busy studying the Indian hospitality space and working towards launching our new venture, which we eventually announced in December 2012.