Speciality Restaurants Ltd, which owns brands such as Mainland China, Oh! Calcutta, Café Mezunna, Flame & Grill and Mainland China Asia Kitchen among others, is looking to expand its network by opening both dine-in restaurants and cloud kitchen outlets targeted at the delivery segment. The company is also looking to tap the ready-to-cook segment with the launch of a varied range of Chinese sauces.   

Plans are afoot to set up at least six new restaurants across various formats within and outside the country and as many as 30 cloud kitchens in the next 18 months. The company currently has 117 outlets, down from around 140 in FY-20 as it closed down some of the unpro­fitable outlets with a tight control on costs with a greater focus on pro­fitability during Covid.

Thriving mode

According to Anjan Chatterjee, Founder and Managing Director of Speciality Restaurants, food industry, which was on a survival and revival mode over the last two years, is now on a “thriving” mode and is expected to grow well with people resorting to “revenge eating”.

“We are looking to open at least two dine-in restaurants in the UAE, one in London and at least two-to-three in India in the next 18 months apart from 20-30 cloud kitchens across the country to tap into the food delivery segment,” Chatterjee said on the sidelines of a press conference to announce the launch of curated offerings of exotic dishes on the eve of the upcoming Durga Puja festival here on Thursday.

Scaling up online-business

The company, which was primarily into dine-in segment, started venturing into the delivery segment during the Covid-led lockdown period. Cloud kitchens gave an opportunity to the company to scale up its online business, without the level of investment that restaurants demand.

“Recognising that this is trend that is here to stay, your company is on course to build a very strong presence in this area as well. Further building upon the concept of cloud kitchens, your company has also innovated the idea of ‘Kitchen within Kitchen’ i.e., multi-brand virtual kitchen format. This concept was explored by your company with a view to enable sweating of assets from existing restaurant kitchens to meet the requirements of online delivery services. This was facilitated by third party delivery apps. This model has increased business exponentially with minimum additional investment,” the company said in its latest annual report (2021-22).

Food delivery, which was close to 7-8 per cent of its revenues in early 2020, currently accounts for around 26-27 per cent of its total sales, which stood at close to ₹253 crore in FY22.

New norm

“Food delivery through online ordering and take-away became the new norm as well as people rediscovering appetite for dine-out at restaurants with a vengeance to make up for the lost period having been con­ned at home for long. The cloud kitchens are operating on a plug & play model with low investments and low manpower costs, low wastage due to support from central base kitchens, low rental and maintenance charges and on the other hand increased the reach of our brands in hitherto unrepresented markets,” the report said.

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