Restaurants

Brewing for success

Riyaaz Amlani CEO & MD Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality

There are few basic parameters that Riyaaz Amlani judges ideas by and the most important one is whether they can be conveyed to the consumer unequivocally. It is this approach that has made Amlani and his company, Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality (IEHPL), among the industry's most creative yet

While the restaurateur's community is continually locked in debate about whether it is food or ambience that eventually clicks, one hospitality company believes that while food is important enough to speak of the highest standard, it is a constant that alone cannot give a restaurant its USP. By upping the ante almost laterally, Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality (IEHPL) has, in a relatively short period of time, introduced as well as put on the anvil, concepts that have rocked the boat of conventional service philosophy. Starting out with a shoestring budget of Rs 15 lakh pooled in by three keen partners, Kiran Salaskar, Riyaaz Amlani and Varun Sahni, IEHPL launched its first project in 2001 - Mocha Coffees & Conversations - another world coffee house that literally became a ghetto for those seeking an eating-out experience that was just about left of the centre.

The game plan

This flagship brand of IEHPL was the first telltale sign of a decidedly atypical approach, given that the individual who rolled it out to an unsuspecting urban lot had never worked in or run a restaurant in India before. Impresario CEO and MD, Amlani soaked in the set piece and service style of musty coffee houses across the Arabic landscape of yore and brought it home to Mumbai. Splashing the walls with a medley of mellow colours and flea market steals and furnishing the space with a random stock of furniture including cinema chairs and Ambassador car backseats, Amlani gave the ghahwas (Arabic for coffee houses) a contemporary spin which he terms as 'rough around the edges'. The traditional sheesha, to go with the aromatic coffee, helped retain the authenticity.

"The problem with conventional coffee shops these days is that they're all doing a bit of the same thing and if you happen to miss the signage at the door, you may not be able to tell the difference. At Mocha, the experience is anything but the stereotype. One of the omens of success for me were the jeers from some in the industry about the arbitrary use of colours. There was one more aspect of Mocha that the traditionalists simply didn't fathom. Its staff has been trained to follow a unique service philosophy which is deliberately laidback. Waiters are instructed specifically not to present the menu immediately when guests walks in and ditto with the bill unless the guest asks for it - a conscious effort not to turn around covers with the result that the first outlet at Churchgate along with all the subsequent outlets witnessed people waiting outside while those inside continued to lounge and chat, long after paying the cheque.

Amlani justifies, "Mocha is not just a place people come to drink coffee. They come to reflect, to talk and to listen. They don't need to be interrupted. Yes, we could have done a lot more business if we turned around covers quickly but that's not what we are after. We are more focused on guests who are inside rather than outside the restaurant." Another element that appears distinctively Mocha is the emphasis on value rather than price. "Other coffee shops may have a lower price threshold but the portion of food or beverage is proportionately lower. While the menu here is priced a tad higher, the portions are relatively bigger," he points out.

Amlani also believes in building communities on his premises, bound together by a passion be it cinema or travel hence Mocha BackPackers Club and Mocha Film Club, both of which have created immense brand equity for IEHPL, almost by incidence. "There are different ways in which customers view Mocha and that is instrumental to how they patronise it. If Mocha were just a place to eat or went alongwith the odd promotion, just to generate hype irrespective of whether the organisation believed it or not, it would never been how it is now and therefore, I believe, these community circles have been key to our success," Amlani proffers.

On the horizon

This uncompromising consolidation of the concept in brick and mortar and service philosophy has culminated into a commendable success which has seen Impresario open three more Mocha outlets on a franchise basis in different cities with more on the anvil. The greatest compliment, Amlani cites, are the offers from Dubai to set up Mocha considering that it was from the Middle East that the idea originated.

Impresario is however primed to do more and did just that with Donut Company by launching kiosk-like stores across the country in malls and multiplexes, targeting a total of 800 outlets. "Micro retail is a good way to grow as the fixed costs and overheads are low and the space requirement is minimal," Amlani says.

Impresario is also poised to locally produce gelato, the Italian parallel of ice cream in a joint venture with an Italian major and retail it under the brand name Amichi. An indigenous Italian sweet dish, gelato dominates the Italian market and is touted as a more natural alternative to ice cream. Impresario is targeting eight wholly-owned outlets in the immediate future. Says Amlani, "Desserts are limited to a certain time of the day although we have seen customers order for desserts even before lunch time." Plans are on to set up a manufacturing facility and the machinery will be imported from Rome. More flagship outlets are planned with limited covers with an area of about 600 square feet.

Amlani believes…

While the industry glosses over growth figures, Amlani quantifies it. "The warmth of Indian hospitality has always been legendary, but today it is poised for a renaissance. I envisage a 20 per cent year-on-year growth for the next five years," he expresses optimistically, citing that the non-metros will grab the larger chunk of action.

The next discernible trend is specialisation, he notes. Surviving the 'One World One Market' scenario, he views the word 'trade secret' as an uncompromising absolute.

Impresario, meanwhile, wishes to be a knowledge-based company, specialising in all areas of F&B by creating a bouquet of scalable brands that can be franchised, supported by a team of talented professionals, before proceeding to establish a nation-wide presence. Franchising will be an integral parameter for success, combining benefits of micro-management coupled with international management systems and tapping the entrepreneurial ability.

He feels that standalone restaurants will have to contend with low visibility, given that brand awareness has spread greatly in the last three years. "Increasingly, we will find people turning to the comfort of a brand if the choice is available," he says cautioning that as a result standalones could face shrunken market share or even extinction. Amlani concludes by saying, "I think brands will have to be very clear on their market strategy, identify their niche markets and then go all out for it. One brand can no longer hope to be everything for everyone."