Mona
Young enthusiasts are fast transforming the food culture of our city. While the culinary scene in Chandigarh is almost close to saturation, some engineers, some students, doubling up as entrepreneurs, backed up by a thorough food and beverage background, are not only standing their ground, but also expanding with multiple outlets in tricity!
Engineer’s hand
It was one summer in the US that gave food enthusiast Ankush Arora an idea to roll out a gourmet American street food chain. And, so was born Uncle Jack’s. While there are options aplenty, yet there was none that did American street style grilled onion, pepper, fajitas or sliders. And, that’s precisely what this engineer’s hand-crafted brand brings to city.
Roll Xpress was born out of the exasperation of another engineer, Amit Chugh. He was appalled by international brands entering Indian markets and succeeding with selling aloo tikki burger! “Why don’t we sell our indigenous flavours, our style, to the international market?”
For Guntash Sandhu, it was the desire to do something productive along with finishing school that gave rise to Hash Guys.
It was eating at Chili’s one day that Shreh Madan saw an opportunity of providing quality food at a reasonable price. With a degree in hotel management from Oxford Brookes University, UK, he was handling the pharmaceutical business and staying in tricity when he conceived the idea of Burgrill. For Divyansh Gupta, Foodibles was born out of the necessity he felt of a tiffin service that could cater to students like him. Three years on, he is happy making about 500 plates a day with major corporates as his clients and looking at expanding to other cities next!
Growth curve
While most major international food chains are here, beating the competition is not an easy game. However, these home-grown brands have done reasonably well. Uncle Jack’s has seven joints in tricity, and presence in Delhi, Ludhiana and Patiala already. If one has to pick its USP, quality food and interesting presentation it is. But a brand is to be built from a scratch. “Just like Rahul, Pooja are very relatable Indian names, so is Jack for America and since our restaurant serves it all American, the name made perfect sense.”
Three years in Chandigarh, not only has this diner won hearts, its cheese fries have gone global, getting a mention in LA Food Fest. His venture has been a case study at IIM Ahmadabad, while also at KFC and McDonald’s headquarters. Beating the competitors is a thought that never crossed this 28-year-old’s mind.
About three years on, Roll Xpress sits pretty at 12 outlets across tricity and aiming at 100 across country by the end of 2019. While most of their business is through online sales, selling through Uber Eats, Swiggy, Zomato and the like, Amit insists that loyal client base is made at the outlet.
Food game
Guntash banked on a catchy name to fetch his first few customers, “Now you see hash as in hashtag or something else, it’s up to you, but someone coming in served my purpose.” Next was to tickle the taste-buds! “I do a lot of Indian-American fusion, which has worked well with city food lovers’ palate.” Shreh claims many firsts that give an edge to his outlet Burgrill, which has seven outlets in tricity and 28 in total, spread across 12 cities. “Being trained in UK, I have learnt to pay attention to every minute detail. Right from the temperature of the food being served at or stored, we have total standardisation.”
(With inputs by Sheetal)
from The Tribune http://bit.ly/300wYV3
via Today’s News Headlines
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