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Startup Saturday: Recrafting the food map with assistance from zero apps
New dishes, personal customer connect and service are this entrepreneur’s ingredients for success
While it is de riguer for most restaurateurs to get on to all the food apps like Swiggy, Zomato, Food Panda, Taha Khan, 28 of Le Flamington feels that these apps are not a genuine representation of what a restaurant is.
“You may chose say Italian and the app will show you restaurants that sell Italian food. But are they really Italian? Do they manage to bring out the essence of a restaurant onto the app.? I think they are misleading. They simply go by the ads restaurants place on their site. If you have invested big money then you will be prominently positioned. Not by your food but by your budget. I knew that my food could not be corrupted by the opinions of people who either do not have an understanding of food or by my budget,” he said.
A restaurant business is much like manufacturing, as it is capital intensive. While it is possible to set up a small kitchen and supply food from home, why did Khan, a young chef and a catering college graduate choose the hard way of setting up a café – Le Flamington?
The roots of the business start with Taha’s intense love for cooking. This love took him to Dadar Catering College and then to the Culinary Institute of America, New York. Coming from a family that runs the popular Soho restaurant, Taha would have been expected to carry on the family business. “I did not want to be told how to do things. I wanted to be on my own,” he said. So instead of continuing with Soho, Taha set up started selling chocolates from his home kitchen.
When he decided that he needed an outlet, his father, Hyder Ali Khan pitched in and offered him space to set up his cafe. The chocolate outlet was about to be launched. When wiser counsel prevailed. “This was meant to be a chocolate outlet but my dad told me that it was a huge risk. People in India perceive chocolate as a sweet. He said that it would be better if I had other items rather than a standalone chocolate store,” he said.
The generally stubborn Taha accepted the advice and decided that it would be a café that he would build. “I understood that if I had to build a sustainable company it had to play by the norms rather than my passion for chocolate,” Khan said.
The next question was what would his café sell? Deciding on the menu was another task. “When I interned at various five star hotels I knew the torture a hot kitchen gives you. 18 to 20 hours before a stove can kill you. Moreover, I did not enjoy that sort of cooking. I preferred ‘cold’ kitchen – baking. Moreover, baking is amenable to standard operating procedures. If you follow the measurements and methods you just can’t go wrong,” he said.
BRANDING
It was decided that the café would sell sweet and savoury baked items and of course chocolate. So what was it that would set him apart from the others? Taha understood the laws of branding only too well. Being a food fanatic he wanted to spread the love of food, make people aware of the varied styles and cuisines around the world. “Not much is available in the city in terms of global cuisine. There are international cuisines, but they are a poor copy,” he said.“Since I love cooking, I am constantly creating new dishes. Even today my menu changes every three-four months,” he said.
FUNDING
Taha took a loan of ₹60 lakhs from his father. The place still belongs to him. “I used the money to set up the kitchen and do the branding. When you bake it is very important ha you have the right gadgets,” he said.
In July 2017, Le Flamington was up. Taha wanted to build his brand on the power of word-ofmouth. “That is the best way you can market yourself.
After the initial slow pace, Khan managed to break even in four months. He now posts a profit even though it is a small 5%. This is not withstanding the real estate cost of the restaurant. His joy is when people compliment him for the food.
