We are going cautiously at this stage.Several local restaurants and drink locations have kept their doors open and are providing easy take out, pick up, drive-thru, curbside, and/or delivery options. Our plan is to open 300 outlets in 5 years time. We launched 14 outlets this year, we are actually consolidating our operations and service before we get into the next phase of expansion which will come from April next year. We are planning rapid expansion but most of them will come from April next year. We are running 37 outlets and two in pipeline which we will launch in next fifteen days- one at T3 Delhi International departure and one at Kolkata Domestic departure. Presently, our outlets are sub franchised and we can’t operate directly. May be from April- May next year there is a possibility to sub franchisee. So, the menu and the decor and the music is 25-30 years centric.Īt this stage we are still looking at consolidating and making it a business that makes money. Our outlets are typically in corporate areas. We have 500-600 footfalls at one outlet.Īs a brand we target people in the age group of 25-30 year old. It is a very interesting market simply because of people there like to eat out, Bengalis are early morning people and hence it makes it an exciting market. In America we are known as America’s healthiest food brand. There is a growing trend towards going organic. People want to eat healthy and there is a growing need to be healthy. Healthy, more local flavours but innovatively unique was really the theme. We actually messed with Indian looking ingredient and taste and we did lot of work with beverages and tea, super food in our beverages. So, that become our Indian resonance and made it very interesting to carry and walk around and also unique to eat. So, what we did was we took rice patty and stuffed it with meat or vegetables and the rice was very nicely flavoured.
Bread as a carrier become cultural disruptive but if I change that and make it more interesting. So, the idea was to see if we could change the carrier. We didn’t Indianise our menu but since the core of the brand is bread and we do our sandwiches very well. But now with all these monetisation rent will flatten or crash. So, if you pay 200-250 sqft as rent then your earning for that should be three times or five times to keep the rentals at 20 per cent and we don’t make it and that’s where the biggest gap is. The bigger part is price to economy ration- the entire rental structure, the kind of location you want to be for revenue success and the kind of sales you do is a massive miss match. Coffee though is not alien anymore but still not like tea. And, as a culture we are not a sandwich eating culture and sandwich is very snacky item for us. As a nation we are not an early morning breakfast kind of nation and most of cafe starts at breakfast. It lies in the consumer psyche and consumption behaviour.
They are really exciting tea with Masala, elaichi, organic flavouring. And, since it is our backend we get all the tea from there. As RPG group, we also own Harrisons Malayalam Ltd which is the largest tea producer in Coorg. It actually took 10 months and three menu changes before we achieved this. We have changed the complete look and feel of the cafe including the high energy lighting, music and the menu which has changed dramatically giving it an Indian flavour and fusion touch so that it becomes palatable to Indian customers and that’s how we started growing to double digits from last year. In the last year we have done lots of changes in the way we were operating Au Bon Pain. And, I think cafe business overall has slowed in the last few years.
The model was of a kind where we were manufacturing our own breads and supplying it to our restaurants making it a very capex savvy which is why it slowed down the overall business. We started in 2009 and expanded reasonably rapidly and put 14 stores in Bengaluru in three years time and then expanded to Kolkata and Delhi.
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