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Behind bars... the trade secret

Restaurants may be restro-bars now, but that doesn't mean good food should not remain the staple of their service

PHOTO: H. VIBHU

FUN AND FOOD Restro-bars today are popular haunts for those in search of a lively evening, but good food is what makes it memorable

Saturday night: jazzy shirts, tight jeans, boys with neatly waxed chests as demanded by the trendy new metrosexual look, rolled up sleeves showing off the pumped-up biceps; gals in the best of finery and immaculate make-up, all set for the fiery night ahead at some newly opened lounge bar. The average age? Between 18 and 25 years. These `party dudes' are looking for an all-new place to party every weekend. It's lots of fun, if your idea of a good time is clinking glasses with the gang and hanging out at cool nightspots. Variety is the name of the game. These customers are kings like never before. And variety opens up at their feet in the form of scores of restro-bars and lounge restaurants that spring up in classy avatars all the time. But look at it from the point of view of the restaurateurs, and you can see the power of choice wielded by these 20-somethings shaking a leg of an evening is enough to spell out the death sentence for most of the Capital's lounge bar restaurants at the very outset, or much before they break even in terms of their investment. Because, as the saying goes, "a new place and the same wine is what dudes are looking for".

Analysing the failures

Analysing the huge failure rate of such ill fated bars, I conclude that this is entirely due to the very trend of trying something new, as there is almost nothing in most of these joints to bring about loyalty for repeat visits among the customers in terms of food. Again, most of the restro-bars are planned with a single-minded determination of the investor to survive only on booze sales. Some of the conscientious ones hire the services of floating freelancer food and beverage and restaurant planners or professionals.

The agenda here is to plan a swanky menu and set the service standards for the restro-bar. While most of them still fail miserably, only because of their ignorance about the food industry, only a few survive who are driven by a passion to make it and are self-reliant once the so-called freelancer restaurant planners exit. In most of the cases, the hired restaurant professionals outline the theme of the restaurant vis-à-vis the cuisine they adopt to serve, plan the menu, provide highly salaried chefs.

The doors open on the final day, the same 18 to 25-year-old dudes flock in, only to say bye and hop to yet another kid on the block the next weekend. Slowly the restro-bar dwindles, unable to retain the high standards set initially, unable to retain the highly paid chefs.

So the moral of the story is, one must be driven by the passion to sustain the taste of the cuisine one chooses to serve in the restaurant, as it is only the food you serve that builds customer loyalty, not the wine. It is the call of the taste buds that makes the customers come and not the heady effect of the wine. So for those behind the counter, the motto is `be good and serve good food'. And for all you party animals, the merry-go-round continues, till some place earns your loyalty.

MONISH GUJRAL

(The author is MD, Moti Mahal Tandoori Trail chain of restaurants. He can be emailed at motimahal@vsnl.com.)

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