4 Restaurant Biz Takeaways from Restaurant India Chennai Show

Differentiation is the Key
No matter how successful your model or restaurant is, you need to have an ‘X’ factor to lure customers; whether it is through F&B, service or the product. “I think the restaurateurs have started looking at segmenting a market by different needs. We see a section of customers who want to eat different thing at different point of time.  Like somebody would want to eat healthy food during the weekdays, but will indulge into a not so healthy food over the weekend. They want a new experience every time they venture out. And, hence restaurant owners are innovating and merging things; whether it's coffee chain merging with beer chain and stuff like that. So, we see that innovation is happening in the market,” shared Ramit Goyal, National Head, Hyperpure by Zomato.

Localization is the Key
Restaurant menu localization is a practice that help restaurants attract diners from diverse cultures and languages. It allows them to personalize their services and products for targeted customers. For eg; Global chains like McDonald’s, Domino’s has become a leader in India by localizing their menu and food products as per the customer and region.

“We have been importing lots of ingredients and food items though India is a country that has its own home-grown products and ingredients and lately we at restaurants have realized the same and have started using those ingredients in our menu,” mentioned Chef Saravanan Ranganathan, Executive Chef, Westin Chennai.

Service at the Forefront
Good customer service is important in the restaurant industry because it can determine the overall success of a business as happy customers generate positive feedback and increase in the revenue and hence we can say that the longevity of business relies on the service. 
“I want to tell restaurant owners and chef that before you come to your restaurants on a daily basis, first ask yourself, why should the customer come to your restaurants and not go to the other restaurants? Ask these question 365 day, you get all the answers and the, the why guest will come to your restaurants and not go to x, y, z restaurants. That's number one. Number two is that it's important that keep an eye. There are certain chefs who create the menus and it thinks that it should be a successful menu, but until it doesn't get a success, we have to keep an eye on the customer. And to keep an eye on the customer, you have to have a great service team. You have to have a great service team who will constantly give you the feedback. It's very important for your menu making,” pointed Chef Sujan Mukherjee, Executive Chef – Food Production, Taj Coromandel- Chennai.

Innovate & Learn
“We are Indians, we are deep rooted in what we do, but we are willing to experiment a bit. Now we are changing, we are looking at fusion foods. Maybe not now, but we are looking at Subway Samosa, maybe with technology coming in we are trying to mix different things. So, we have to retain what we have because that's the core flavor that we, but we can explore something new,” added Sanandan Sudhir of On2Cook.