F&B

A celebration of food

Deemed as an innovative way to market restaurants, food festivals are becoming increasingly relevant in an industry where a new one is cropping up at every curb. Priya Krishnaswamy finds out how such festivals can help promote the brand

A great way to showcase a restaurant's culinary skills, food festivals have been a popular way to promote any eatery. Even though it is time consuming, the response is generally worth the hard work.

Any food festival that is not run-of-the-mill and has the potential to excite food lovers is bound to succeed. Dimple Kohli, business head of Gourmet Gallery in New Delhi, is of the opinion that once any food festival becomes successful, it adds to the mileage of the restaurant as it creates a recall value for guests.

However, what’s important is for restaurants to play on their strengths when planning a food festival. Saurabh Khanijo, director of Kylin Restaurant in New Delhi, says, "Food festivals help in branding if executed properly but may backfire if it's not conceptualised well. One needs to do the groundwork before opening it to public."

Food for thought

First things first, deciding the target audience. They are key to the success of a festival and the theme will largely define them.

Sure enough the event, specially the week-long and ones that go on for ten days, is a definite means of attracting more customers. Johnson, GM of Silver Coin The Restaurant, Mumbai, says, "Our food festivals have managed to attract around 30 to 40 per cent new customers. The aim of the festival is to create more awareness of the restaurant and giving it good publicity. There are curious customers who come in to find out more about the special cuisine being offered while there are the regulars who know what to find and where."

The new customers are major indicators of the success of a food festival. However retention of the old ones is as much important. Says Chef Nimish Bhatia, The Grand Ashok in Bangalore, "When new customers are happy with the cuisine, they spread the word to a few other prospective customers."

Eventually, considering that the food festival is a regular event, the restaurant introduces the cuisine to its menu in due course. Chef Bhatia adds, "At Baluchi's, where we serve Northwest frontier cuisine, there are certain recipes that we have added to the a la carte after the success of a food festival, owing to repeated requests."

Innovative concepts

While food festivals handle gastronomical skills, it always pays to have a relevant ambience to complement the cuisine. For instance, some hotels target high-end customers by organising rich cuisines that offer a certain status symbol. The Caviar & Champagne festival held in The Leela Palaces & Resorts in Bangalore is one such example. Nitienaa Arif, its head (Communications & PR), says, "We import the best quality products for our food festivals. We had the special Beluga, Sevruga and Asetra species for the festival and our customers loved the experience."

According to Kohli, food fests must be correctly timed. The Taj West End in Bangalore played host at The Blue Ginger food festival with its authentic Vietnamese cuisine. This coincided with the Vietnamese New Year. Similarly, a Chinese food festival while the Chinese celebrate their New Year is a good idea. On the same note, a Kashmiri cuisine festival cannot be held in summer as the ingredients used are heavy and warm in nature.

Other ways to get innovative is having an organic food festival. Chef Sitapathi, executive chef at The Chancery Pavillion, says, "An organic food festival aims at providing market-based incentives to the producers of organic, minor-millet and less cultivated crops. The overall objective of such a festival would be to encourage conservation of bio-diversity."

Sometimes stalls are also arranged to create awareness among customers. Conducting such environmental friendly festivals will add value to the 'ecotel' tag of a hotel. Commenting on the dual role such innovative festivals play, Chef Sitapathi says that it's a difficult decision to make as the festival would risk a lot of fundamentals. He further adds that in case the festival does not attract the expected response, the eatery's reputation is at stake and the next time it organises a similar event, it might not work.

Even though there is scope for failure, there are other ways that a customer can be made happy. Chef Bhatia says, "What goes into a festival is research. For instance, incorporating intricate customs observed during the Chinese New Year in a Chinese food festival like giving away Feng Shui coins, fortune cookies, etc. When customers walk in, they look for more than just food; they look for an experience."

Although there is no perfect recipe for success of a food festival, good food plays a major role in it. After all, it is only wise to remember that the guest is there to eat and everything else is just secondary.