The Hindu Business Line : Shoppers' Stop plans F&B foray

Retailer Shoppers' Stop is aiming for a slice of the lucrative Indian food and beverages market which is growing rapidly, fuelled by a population that is experimenting with Kahua, Sangria, Sushi, momos and everything in between.

The company is firming upplans to foray into the F&B business where it will set up branded food courts and stand alone delis and cafes that will compete with quick service chains such as Barista, McDonalds and Pizza Huts.

Over the next three years the company will have a hundred of these outlets with a pan-Indian presence, Ms. Harshita Gandhi, Head, F&B, Shoppers' Stop, confirmed to Business Line. While the food courts plan is still being finalised, the company has a clear roadmap for delis and cafes. The retailer, it can be recalled, recently entered into a strategic partnership with the Mumbai-based Blue Foods Ltd to kick of Brio, a trendy European style deli at Bangalore and Mumbai. Plans are now being firmed up to make the Brio brand, which offers a range of coffees and deli style snacks, into a stand-alone offering too.

"Brio has the potential to stand on its own and will offer the mature, discerning coffee lover who does not want to have his cuppa in a café, dominated by noisy 16-year-olds, an alternative hang out," Ms Gandhi said, pointing out that good food at great prices and ambience will be the key differentiator, "While Brio will appear in its stand-alone format by end of this year, Desi Café, our Indian café at Hyper City will follow by March 07," she added. The company already has six more Brio outlets under construction at Chennai, Mumbai and Lucknow and says that in the next three months it will have 13 F&B outlets operational. "By the end of the year we plan to have at least 20 outlets in place across the country,'' she added.

With the country witnessing an explosion in mall development, Shoppers' Stop will tap the opportunity by setting up multi-cuisine food courts that will initially appear in its own stores or in malls in which it is present, Ms Gandhi said.

"We are a non-F&B company that is entering a market that is already crowded and we are focussing right now on getting our systems right so that we can give a superior product that is very different from the existing players,'' Ms Gandhi said.