The Hindu Business Line : Doing business with relish

The rules in the food business have changed and how. Going by the experience of three Bangalore-based first-generation restaurateurs, one doesn't necessarily have to be of hotelier pedigree to whet people's appetite.

Madhu Menon, Radhika Madhavan and Vishy Shenoy were not born in traditional families involved in the hospitality business. On the other hand, they pursued successful corporate careers before succumbing to the itch of trying something new. The result was three speciality restaurants — Shiok Far-Eastern Cuisine, 3 Amigos and The Biryani Merchant. Though the trio enjoy their current occupation more, they admit that it's their experience in the corporate world that has pushed them in the right direction.

When they ventured out, the restaurant business was already overcrowded and they had to jostle for a table for themselves and their clients. With customers becoming more discerning, this was not an easy task. Says Madhu Menon of Shiok Far-Eastern, "At my restaurant, I could have easily offered the same old Punjabi-Chinese fare which is very popular now. But I decided to give my guests a different experience." And so at Menon's `high-calibre' (he likes to call it that) restaurant, you can have Malay, Thai, Indonesian, Singaporean and Korean food.

Radhika Madhavan and Mayur Raol, who have brought Mexican vegetarian, Italian, Mediterranean and American food to Bangalore, realised that branding was the most important aspect in a restaurant business and, thanks to their jobs in a market research and branding communications firm, their skills in these areas were well-honed. "I realised how important it was to create a brand and 3 Amigos benefited a lot from my previous corporate experience," says Radhika.

Vishy Shenoy was pretty sure he had a good product on hand when he chose to start a `Biryani only' place in Bangalore. "Of course, I realised that the product was right and all I had do was the right kind of marketing and packaging of the product." He betted on Biryani because he knew there were Biryani aficionados spread across the country. Though Shenoy has been a Biryani lover since childhood, it was his travels during his corporate days (he worked with Parryware and an FMCG company) that gave him the variety and flavour needed in the business. As a salesperson in an FMCG company, he had to visit remote villages across the country and overseas. He realised that the entire Asian continent enjoyed the famed Biryani in numerous forms — as many as 40 variations of the dish. Explaining how his job helped him find the right inputs for a restaurant, he says that while on a sales trip he met a dealer who told him about a railway coolie who cooked Biryani in the Rawther style. "The Rawthers come from the Tamil Nadu-Kerala border and they were housekeepers to the Nawab. This coolie had migrated to Mysore in search of a job and he makes the best Biryani there."

Madhu Menon, Shiok Far-Eastern Cuisine

Menon, a software engineer, gave up his job to start Shiok. "I was pained by the fact that a company could sack one-third of its employees overnight." All through his seven-year stint as a techie, his friends kept insisting that he was in the wrong business.

But Menon took his time researching the restaurant business before venturing into Shiok. "Food has been a passion for me for as long as I can remember," he says.

This passion was further enhanced by his culinary education as a student in Australia when a friend taught him to make several Oriental delicacies. And today Menon is a chef, though not a hands-on one, at Shiok. In less than 10 months since he opened the restaurant, he's broken even. Though he's yet to make profits he feels he is in the right business. Did he have this confidence a year ago? "Cooking, as a hobby, is different from a business proposition. But I knew I had a good product and that I possessed good marketing and business skills."

On how the software experience has helped him in his new venture, Menon says, "I have learnt the value of optimisation — how to operate with minimum resources and to use my design interface experience."

Radhika and Raol researched the industry and met some fellow entrepreneurs to gain insight into the food business. It also helped that they had extremely professional and experienced retail partners who guided them in the right direction. 3 Amigos opened its third outlet in Bangalore last week.

Was there ever a niggling doubt that they may fail? Says Radhika, "An entrepreneur never enters a business feeling that he will not be successful. That defeats the purpose of starting a business."

Menon says he always knew food was the right kind of business to get into because "food will always be in demand, no matter what the economic scene is like." Biryani Merchant Shenoy was `90 per cent' certain that he would succeed though he says he would have been a lot more confident if he had some experience in the hotel industry.

How supportive were their families when they announced their intentions of getting into the restaurant business? Shenoy laughs and says, "My father asked me why did I have to go to a B-school if I was thinking of getting into the hotel business." But his wife backed him and was confident that his XLRI degree would stand by him if he failed in his venture.

Menon's family was encouraging and also funded the venture. Radhika admits there was some scepticism from a few people but both family and friends offered their support, without which, it would have been difficult to set up the business. "It's vital to have emotional and physical support from family and friends at the start of a new venture," she says.

They all banked on Bangalore to give them the right push needed for this kind of entrepreneurship. That's because "the city has a higher concentration of upper middle-class families for whom foreign travel has become affordable, exposing them to international cuisines," says Menon. His next restaurant will be in Mumbai, a city that's equally receptive to new cuisines.

Vishy Shenoy, The Biryani Merchant

Shenoy started with Bangalore because the city has a large cosmopolitan crowd that enjoys this kind of speciality food. In fact, he's now venturing into the ready-to-eat Biryani segment.

Radhika feels India's silicon city is definitely a foodie's heaven. "It's a quintessential melting pot with diverse cultures and equally diverse food habits and palate. Therefore, there are great opportunities for restaurateurs," she says.

Thanks to the immense travelling in the IT industry, Bangloreans get an opportunity to taste international cuisine and they relish the prospect of sampling foreign fare back home as well.

Pictures by G.R.N. Somashekar

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