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Burger battles
India is witnessing a burger revolution. I remember a burger was simple in the old days. Today it is complex?
Bengaluru
Jayanthi, a burger is a burger is a burger. Not really. A lot has happened over the recent decades in India in burger-country. In the beginning it was the street-corner food cart that sold burgers at ₹12 and ₹20. Everyone had a local name, and everyone aped what one saw in the Archie and Jughead comics of yore. Some like Sunshine burger in Bengaluru attained fame that had people queuing up to taste the fare. And then in came the burger at the five-star restaurants. They were the best places to go to taste the “real burger”. Sizes were bigger than the food cart and the taste was unique. Some even flew in the lettuce from lettuce country.
The real burger revolution in India was, however, led by McDonald’s. It entered slow and sure. The spread of both super-franchises, one based in Mumbai and the other in Delhi, made McDonald’s the craving. Huge queues formed for weeks after the opening of early outlets in India. But then, things have changed. McDonald’s has today become the lowest common denominator of burgers. The brand also suffers the image of a value-for-money burger dished out in outlets which smell alike, look alike and behave alike. To an extent, McDonald’s in terms of imagery is the ration shop of burgers.
In such an environment, when the market has been seeded and explored, in come the upper-end offerings. Every new offering is about size, quality of patty, experience (whether hand-crafted or machine-made), and the eventual bastion that will be breached will be about the freshness of the food on offer.
McDonald’s biggest Achilles heel will be its long storage of product and supply-chain efficiencies that might result in a patty being older than you can imagine it to be. Therefore, expect a fair bit of product segmentation in this space which will yield to new market shares being cobbled together by new players.
There’s a lot more in the burger space to come. Enjoy!
Has FSSAI been a big brother or a big bother to marketers?
Hyderabad
Shalini, a bit of both. Sometimes, it has to be both, with a regulator vested with a task as onerous as the one vested with FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India).
FSSAI can reject samples on a large number of counts.
As of today, literally every processed food and beverage item can come under scrutiny.
The quality of inputs used, and most importantly, contaminants of every kind, and, of course, the ability of these foods to keep within the purview of expiry dates indicated on the packaging are key issues.
The number of foods and beverage items that can come under the purview of the FSSAI include both packaged products and items used in quick service restaurants. I do believe QSR use-items are big and open issues.
Manufacturers that have operations across the globe need to be careful and consistent as well. Different countries, different norms. That has been the old adage. Not anymore. Companies will need to stick to two sets of norms. One is the legal norm as specified under the specific laws and rules that govern the specific country, and the other is the ethical norm of being internally compliant with global standards, as accepted by the corporate entity. The higher of the two standards needs to be embraced.
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