Innovation brews success

As a CEO of Barista Lavazza, Sanjay Coutinho thinks that propagating the brand philosophy is the pivotal responsibility. Barista offers home away from home experience ensuring perfect comfort and pleasure of a guest. “Our mandate is that if today you have to go to Barista, you just think that you have to go to your second home where you can probably celebrate and unwind, or whenever you are down and out, you can just sneak to chill or relax here.  Today is all about consumerism - how you can keep them satisfied, how you can woo them all the time, and I think it’s the customer’s delight that it is important. So, I would not really say that there is a particular goal or such; it is just that we want to keep doing what we were doing and do it in a much better way all the time. And we are the market leaders in what we are doing, which is innovation and providing a true Italian coffee experience.

India, being a tea drinking nation, is a challenge

Coutinho describes the situation with an example, “Earlier there were just Barista and Café Coffee Day along with a coffee chain from Hyderabad as well. Those were the only three players out of which two have only survived. Now a lot of coffee players have emerged and I am sure international players would love to come to India.”

Barista has been here for a good ten years and staying on the right track of growth and innovation. Coutinho says, “If you look, the coffee culture came into existence around 2000. Since then the coffee consumption has grown. In fact there are a lot more people who are now aware of what coffee is. Earlier it was all about your instant and filter coffee. Now it’s beyond that. Mocha, Latte, Espresso are now the popular terminologies. Earlier the consumption was majorly down south, but now it is more cosmopolitan and is evenly balanced across the country. That is the transition with regards to the consumption. And in terms of being retailers in coffee, I think it has been all about learning. Retail is all about learning. You keep learning and re-learning all the time. We had to keep up pace with the consumer trends and for Lavazza it is all about the innovations, and that is where we have maintained our leadership mandate. In a relatively short span of 10 years, Barista Lavazza has managed to capture the loyalties of many coffee lovers. Its leadership position can be attributed to a remarkable expertise in specialty blends coupled with a sound technical competence, an ever evolving retail experience and top-end products.”

Competition is always welcome

“It’s better because that itself will widen the market space for us. I think that for us it is important to keep ourselves abreast with the competition and just ensure that we deliver our core promise, which is serving the true Italian coffee experience. Our environment is more friendly and welcoming. I think that is something that we have always retained and as long as we retain that and keep delivering that, I think we will be able to sustain.”

Innovation earns volume

Innovation plays the crucial role in building the brand Lavazza. “Even globally if you talk about innovation and coffee, it’s always Lavazza that comes into your mind. Even we have our own methods of innovation. See, for a café concept like us is not all about the coffee, it’s much beyond that, it’s more about how elaborate you can get. We always experiment in terms of food, in terms of beverages, where you have non-coffee beverages too. The CWG beverage that we offered helped us because we wanted to tie up with the theme, not really associate or something like that, but just give that fillip in terms of associating with a sport.”

The performance is quite impressive. “We keep doing such things frequently. We are going to launch the winter menu in November which will have the entire new range coming in. According to me, breaking the menu fatigue is very important to us. I think we as consumers, especially in India, try out different things all the time, but again we still look up to a brand for credibility because we have been going there for donkey’s years. So, when a brand builds that credibility, I think whatever that brand is able to innovate, you as a consumer tends to move towards that brand because you feel safer with that brand, which you have been patronising for years.”

Innovation to what extent - are idli and poha in the café raising eyebrows?

“That’s again a part of innovation. I think it is very important to respect the sensibilities of regional tastes and preferences. We introduced this menu down south along with north as well. In north, we did it more on the highways because we wanted to experiment there. And again we even launched paranthas in our café in south because you don’t find much of northern food there. So, for us it was important to have our local flavours intact and add something new and exciting as well. And that mix really blended well and it helped us.   If you look at Ahemdabad, out of mere experiment we turned the cafés present there to full vegetarian and it worked for us and is doing extremely well. The reason is acceptance. India is a diverse country and hence it becomes very important for the brands to understand and respect this diversity and the different sensibilities.”

So, in a nutshell, were all the experiments successful?

There was nothing that actually backfired because these experiments are not conducted at a pan India level. “Again what helped us is the fact that India is still regional and dominantly local. It allows you that scope to actually work. Of course we use a lot of research because India as a country is also a tourist destination. We do get a lot of international consumers and for many of them it is like a brand connect.”     

The research that involves

There were a lot of focused group studies. Certain pockets of Barista outlets were under scanner. “We do dipstick with customers. I mean, why do you need to have an external research when everything is lying within your stores? Your guests are your researchers; they are the one who are going to tell you what you are doing - whether it is right or wrong. In the process, we have come a lot more close to our consumers over a period of time. But again this is more from a micro perspective. The other external researches are from macro perspective.”

Barista Lavazza & United Breweries tie-up  

The initiative is one step further towards enhanced guest experience. The result was introduction of a range of wines at Lavelle Road outlet in Bangalore. “Traditionally, in Italy wines are available across café and hence the launch of wines would be an extension to the authentic Italian café experience, highlighting the Italian heritage. To complete the experience a special menu has been put together to go with the wine. Barista Lavazza recommends a well thought out food menu that goes well with wine like scrumptious pizzas, pastas, club sandwiches, wraps, potato wedges and more to tantalise taste buds. Barista Lavazza continues the tradition of offering refreshed menu to guests which thrives on new tastes. With the wine menu available at the stores we will be able to reach out to customers who otherwise had to visit a bar for a glass of wine. Last year we had launched the liqueur based coffees which till some time back was not available at any other coffee shops. We came up with an exhaustive range of products in the liqueur coffees. And a few months back we had launched wines. Through this we believe in creating that kind of exclusivity for our guest.”

A lot of stress on communications

“Activities have a lot to do with interaction with consumers and we have managed to do that to a larger extent because I think interaction is not about what you communicate, it’s also more about what you communicate and what feedback you get. We have been using digital media a lot, social media, networking, etc. We have been using mobile space a lot. We have formed communities on the facebook.

The impact has been phenomenal. You realise the impact when your consumers get back to you and that has increased tremendously. We keep getting feedbacks, whether it is good or bad. We appreciate that.”

No number game

“Honestly, let me tell you that we are not chasing numbers. We would still want to be in that space providing our customers with a core promise. Having said that, as and when the opportunity arises, we will definitely open an outlet. Primarily the idea is to open in those geographies where we feel our target audience would prefer us to be present.

We have opened 30 new outlets during the last one and a half years. It has been all about the team work. The team that I got now is rare to find. What you see of Barista has been doing presently is nothing but team effort. And this is only going to be better because the bonding has been fabulous. And obviously it’s the team that is going to take it to the next level.”