
It is true when they say that one doesn’t understand someone’s journey till they have walked in their shoes. Over the years as a food writer and columnist, I’ve seen the rise of restaurants very intimately.
This took a new turn at the end of last year, as part of a new project with an upcoming restaurant. Needless to say, much of my experiences have changed the way I thought.
Over the past two months, I have been shadowing a successful restaurateur to understand what truly goes behind building a successful brand. During this time, our experiences included food trials to gauge items that would be starred as must-haves on the upcoming menu and dishes that we unanimously felt were too close to what competitors already offered.
What was even more exciting was the process of agreeing upon the finest aspects of the restaurant in the making - the prints on the crockery and the texture of lamp shades to ensure optimum lighting without being overbearing.
Then, came the art of managing a team. This particular bit showcased how running a successful culinary venture is nothing short of a social experiment, for alongside cooking skills, the more important bits of this process included the innate sensibility of natural leadership, the ability to find and strike a balance between having efficient versus necessary employees, and more.
It is, as many would agree with me, a complete circus. But this was not a surprise - after all, each team sport has equivalent dynamics associated with them.
The entire process took me back by years to the start of my career, when I’d first witnessed the rhythm of operations behind the scenes of five-star hotels, resorts, and hospitality chains.
The seemingly mammoth volume of requisite coordination felt nearly impossible to attain. Yet, five-star hotels and fine-dining restaurants make for our favourite places to unwind. Here, customers and guests are discretionary - and would vocally criticise the face of a venture if things were not up to their liking.
In fact, a single experience was all that stood between winning a patron for life or losing them to a competitor.
As a journalist, even though you witness this up close and personal, you don’t stop by to ponder upon it. From the critic’s monocle, service feels imperative, and the science of customer experience design is a lost art that we, especially in India, are yet to master. It is this thought that led me on over the past two months.
My partners in this venture, the co-owners, affirmed that it is this insight that they truly wanted me to bring to the table. While I have been amply excited about it, I’ve also had a tinge of guilt going with it. What struck my conscience deeply is that even though we’re in such close proximity to business owners in the culinary industry, we don’t entirely get to appreciate the voluminous nature of efforts that go behind such operations.
On any given day, a large number of variable factors can go wrong, leaving a leading restaurant to struggle. On better days, smooth operations fall in place - albeit not without years of practice and coordination.
As I voiced my newfound feelings about being a food critic in the past, a close acquaintance reminded me that there’s room and necessity for both to coexist.
For restaurants, it’s important to know that competition in the market, especially in the rising economy of urban India, is stiff - and at times, nearly imperious for new ventures to enter. To this end, critics make for an ideal litmus test not just for publicity, but also to understand if a particular venture’s servings are worthy of surviving in one of the toughest consumer markets in the world.
As the internet democratised access to publicity platforms, the essence of a critic and the need for them too to earn their stripes have perhaps been lost. Today, platforms are accessible to anyone, which means that every individual is today a stakeholder in a restaurant’s fortune.
Amid this epiphany, a clear realisation was that there is no one-stop solution to how a restaurant should work, or deal with critics.
As I straightened the edges of the tablecloth in anticipation of hosting a pre-launch table at this new project, I couldn’t help but wonder how the same experience holds such different aftertastes for each party involved.
Vernika Awal is a food writer who is known for her research-based articles through her blog ‘Delectable Reveries’