How customers can make time worthwhile at restaurants

Over the course of time dining out scenario in India is changing. Today, people do not go out for food, it’s about experience and the extra that he is getting at his favourite restaurants. Indians like fresh food they do not like food lying around in a refrigerator whole day. These days customers like their food to be flavoursome. “You can’t serve chicken tikka masala with coffee. Indians like their strong, bold flavours,” says Riyaaz Amlani, CEO & MD- Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality.

Similarly, if you are running a 100 seater restaurant you should have 1000 seats available. But most successful restaurants are doing only 60 percent occupancy which means 40 per cent seats is not being sold. And, that’s where restaurateurs started bringing more experience into their business by introducing and converting their cafe space to office space where 40 per cent of the people come from Monday to Friday from 9 to 6 to work out from them. So that create another sense of community there when they get to meet other people and they could to collaborate and interact with each other.

QSR is no more a quick service place

Around 15-20 years ago when MNCs like Domino’s, McDonald’s started coming to India because they were more of an aspirational brand into the market as people have never seen such brands coming to India. And, it was since then when income started going up. And, that’s how people used to go to these restaurants, sit there and enjoy food and now these brands have become a commodity brand. And, it was then when cafe came into existence. Lot of big restaurants are shifting to express and delivery and takeaway is becoming an important part of QSRs. 55 per cent of Domino’s is sit-in even though people thought their delivery business, believes expert.

Quick service segment has gone into a transformation mode. Quick service restaurant where people used to go for a quick meal, place your order, grab the food and go has somehow traversed into a how it is being addressed. “If I have to say Papa John’s is a QSR it is because it serves only one kind of product and it does not serve a gourmet product. It is typically made to serve as fast as possible. Generally gourmet pizza takes 30 minutes to be made but we made sure that we do the pizza in 15-20 minutes and get it served to customers in the stipulated time. It all depends on how consumer has changed over the time,” shares Sandeep Singh, CEO- Papa John’s Pizza which does 80 per cent takeaway and delivery orders as compared to 20 per cent which is a dine in order.