Quick Service Restaurants organise street food market

Nikita Peer

This one’s a recipe for an entrepreneur with a ticklish palate. Picking the concept literally off the pavement, a new breed of start-ups is reinventing humble street food and serving it up to a new generation of customers in eateries called Quick Service Restaurants (QSRs). Yes, they’re giving street food new respect. And buying into new and improved vada paav, bhel puri, idli-dosa and kachoris are customers in busy metros, who eat on the go, have no time to cook and simply love to snack. Eat Your Heart Out QSRs are the new trend in the restaurant business and are organising the Indian street food market, which has seen a number of start-ups venturing into this space in the last three years. “I wanted to enter the FMCG or daily consumption market but they seemed to have peaked. So I thought the next best bet was getting into the street food segment,” confesses Venkatesh Iyer, Co-Founder of the Mumbai-based Goli Vada Pav. Iyer launched his start-up in 2004 with a seed capital of Rs one crore raised from personal savings. When it comes to vada paav, you name it and Iyer has reinvented it, from his signature Goli Vada Paav to Goli Tikka Vada Paav to Goli Palak Makki Vada Paav and, yes, even Goli Schezwan Vada Paav! Iyer opened his first outlet in Kalyan and now has 175 stores across India . His biggest competitor is Mumbai-based Jumboking, which sells an Americanised version of this traditional Maharashtrian staple. The first branded vada paav in India, Jumboking launched in 2001 and serves ‘combos’, a burger-like vada paav with a glass of cola. Smaller Cities Warm Up And why only Mumbai? Pune-based Rakesh Rajendran thought the time was right to tuck into the QSR pie, when he launched his DumA-Dum brand in August 2011. “After battling long working hours and chaotic traffic in urban areas, the last thing you want to do is take your family out to dinner. So most people end up ordering in. And that’s where QSR, with their free home delivery service, steps in. Moreover, evening TV shows have replaced the traditional habit of dining out. Shows like Bigg Boss and Fear Factor and the IPL T20 and World Cup T20 have taken over prime time, which is also dinner time, and TV has become a family event which none of us wants to miss,” explains Rajendran, whose menu temps with categories like Traditionally Made Biryani, Indian Curry Pot, Grills and From Our Chinese Wok. Juicy Opportunities QSRs are growing increasingly palatable because the bigger restaurants are becoming more and more exorbitant. Skyrocketing LPG prices, expensive overheads and the rising price of raw materials are pushing their menus beyond the reach of middle-class Indians. This makes the simple yet versatile and affordable menus and of QSRs even more tempting. Encouraged by the response, some of these start-ups are hungry to make the most of the opportunity. “Our population is more than a hundred crore. Even if I target 50 crore people who eat a Rs 10 vada pav once a year, it’s a clear Rs 500-crore opportunity,” says Iyer, who has 20 years of corporate consultancy, franchising chain and retail chain experience under his belt. Machines Maketh The Menus But how do small eateries like these ensure quality and uniformity in their menus? “It’s all about effective use of technology,” reveals Iyer. “You need technology to avoid wastage and pilferage and to maintain standardisation because retaining cooks all over India is a difficult proposition. We invested Rs 1 crore in technology and today we have a fully automatic plant, which can make 75,000 vadas a minute. Through the use of cold rooms and cold storages, the shelf life of our vadas is six months. We transport the patty in a frozen truck to 175 stores across India .” But Bangalore-based Upsouth, a QSR that serves South Indian delicacies, does not believe in serving completely processed food. It makes use of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), which governs its back end and a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system through which it receives real-time feedback at its head office. Also, since they take around 6-7 minutes to serve every order, every customer is provided with a handheld device that beeps to let them know when their order is ready to be collected. Franchise Is The Flavour While, initially, most QSR start-ups invest in two to three stores, they use the franchise model to expand. “Anyone wanting to take a Goli Vada Pav franchise needs a 300-sq ft space and an investment of Rs 10 lakh. This includes the interiors, equipment and franchise. They have to fry the patty at the store level on an automated stove,” says Iyer. Rajendran’s Dum-A-Dum is less than 18 months old and he owns all six outlets in the brand. He is not sure if the franchise model will work for his set-up although he is open to the idea. Overcoming Hiccups Ensuring uniformity of taste across outlets is one of the biggest challenges. “A centralised kitchen is key. Here, the product is semi-cooked and then transported to all parts of the city,” reveals Vijay Abhimanyu, Co-Founder, Upsouth, which has three outlets in the brand. Also, real estate is not easy to come by. So getting the right space in the right location is another big challenge. However, QSR entrepreneurs are unanimous that there are more opportunities than challenges in this sector and QSR has ample scope for scalability. You can send your feedback on smementor@moneycontrol.com or simply post comments below