Swiggy’s Post

Transcript

Hello everyone, welcome to yet another episode of the Swiggy Growth Platter series where you get a chance permission to the FNB industry stalwarts and learn more about their story and how they build their business. In this episode we have Bird with us who is the founder of. California burrito, the brand which all of us love, Aero. This is one of my favorite brands. And when it comes to my son pestering me for food, this is right on top. He wants a California burrito every time whenever we order. Glad to hear. Welcome to the show, bud. Thank you. Great to be here. So, Burt, before moving to the business side of the discussion that I'm sure the first question which often gets asked to you is what gets what brought you here in India? It's it's difficult to understand. Someone from the US coming to India and selling Mexican food. What what landed you get? So in 2010, I decided to study in India and I had an absolutely phenomenal experience here. That experience led me as soon as I went back to the US to decide to come and start a business here because I felt that India was on a fantastic growth trajectory. I loved India and I felt that in my young years there would be nothing I could do to learn more, have a better life experience than by coming here. So that was what happened and I've now been here over 12 years and it's been a phenomenal journey both with California burrito and seeing India grow a tremendous way. That's that's great to hear. But we all love for India clearly stands out and we've seen that in the kind of food yourself. But our team has also done some research and what they tell me that you actually wanted to pursue music as one of your career interests, but what happened after that? What how did they react when you told them that you want to sell food in India? Well, I think they were certainly shocked. Ohh. You know, no one on our family has started a restaurants before, although there are entrepreneurs in my mom's side of the family. But they were always very supportive of me to be to be honest, I had a great passion for music. I was doing a movie, music and TV music. And I think what I felt was after coming to India that. Would I didn't want to sit at a computer all day and doing music is a lot of sitting at a computer all day. And I also felt that I can always come back to music in the future. So maybe when I turn 50, I'll get back into to film music. That's a great lead for us. I think in future when we launch our music series, we know who to go to catch. The other question I had was why Bangalore? We also hear that. You are It also has some connection with the Kannada movie star Ambarish. So just wanted to know more about that. So when we were writing the business plan for California Burrito, we had evaluated multiple cities. But after I think doing a considerable amount of research found that Bangalore was probably the best place that we could start and as far as Amberish goes. So when we first came to Bangalore, Ambarish was having his 6th, 60th birthday and everywhere they had put up the. Posters of him and I thought wow, some people really like this guy. So I wound up watching a few of his movies. There was one Viram Parampare where it was Ambarish and Kicha Sudeep and really thought he was a fantastic movie star, almost like a Clint Eastwood type. So one day we talked to an auto driver and he said he lives over in JP Nagar. So we drove by, we bought him a bottle of tequila and we dropped by his house and they had had a great afternoon with him and he was a fantastic guy. Very friendly guy and I think, you know, whenever we come to a place that we're not from, I think we should try and learn a bit about the culture of the place. So Daniel was trying to immerse in the culture a bit. Told me that you watched a few Canada movies of Ambari. Multiple other stars. One very important question which is in my mind. Kannada gotta but food nanus sopa sopa Kannada bashe matana tutamen. Kannada undu arputha Vara bashe Karnataka Kai paruva eleru Kannada bashe kalabu matana dabeka. That's impressive. Clearly, you don't need your subtitles in your movie screens. All pasulka. Alright, let's jump to a few questions on the business side. But, and I'm sure people would love to listen to your story on the business as well. What I've heard from multiple restaurant partners is that the FNB industry is very difficult to crack. Anchored in the last 12 years when you been in this journey, you would have had your own set of challenges and setbacks as you were running California 32. Can you share with us a few examples of those And what were what were those tips which you're going to tell a fellow restaurant partners about, about this? So I think that you know, getting started. First off, I didn't know anyone Bangalore when I started here. But I think also not really having been from the FNB business, there was a lot of learning. And the, the first challenge we face is we had, you know, hired someone senior in operations and it turned out this person was quite a bit of a crook. So I think the, the initial challenge for us there was a figuring out who we could trust, figuring out how to run restaurants at the same time and this, this. This was a big challenge. I think restaurants, generally the type of people who start restaurants are not necessarily financially savvy people. It's a passion. And so an advice I would say for people who are getting started in restaurants is make sure you have a good finance brain working with you. But did you also face challenges around supply considering that you were getting a new cuisine into India and some of the ingredients which you use here would not have been readily available in the India market at all? For sure. I think if we go back to 2012. We started many of the ingredients that we used today were not available. So if it's whether it was beans or whether it was, you know, Chipotle chilies, these were things that were not imported at that time. Now the market over the past 10 years has developed substantially. And now even we have gotten into contract farming to to grow products that you can't get otherwise. And somewhere in that journey, food delivery happened. And I think you got associated with Swiggy. Tell us. More about it, how did that that dissociation go? Sure. So I remember Gosh back in 2014 or 2015, so he had just gotten started and it was getting started in Koramangala and Sriharsha had approached us to list on Swiggy. Now we had had such a nightmare doing delivery. We were doing our own delivery at that time and I felt it was such a nightmare business that we said we would decline and not not be on food delivery, which was certainly a mistake not to get involved. At that time, but we did I think the onboard on swing in 2017 and sweet has been a terrific growth partner for us. And and it you know, I think particularly with things like the partner app and with the data that we get, you know, so he's become incredibly important part of our business. I think dine in businesses is challenging in some regards because you don't have much data on, you know, maybe you do a customer survey, obviously you can see whether it's going up or down, but you don't really have a great. View on what kind of the fundamentals of the business are looking like in dinette delivery. On the other hand, I think Swaggy was always at the forefront of providing data to partner. So whether it was a prep time data, the ratings data, the, you know, the cancellation, the reviews of being able to now read so many different reviews. There's huge value that gets added there, which I think, you know, it makes us improve dramatically as restaurants now coming to the market and how you see the market developing. There is immense contribution in the QSR space and the consumer is ever changing. How do you stay relevant to the changing customer in these times? We have an approach of just incremental improvement I would say, which is every day we focus on making our product a little bit better and there are always new things we can do to improve it. I think our goal is to be the best in Mexican inspired cuisine and, and and the best in burrito rice bowl. So just focusing on improving these little, little changes every day, which sounds boring, but I think that's fundamentally what it's all about and taking what our customers tell us and improving everyday. And it's a brilliant point you make also improving a little every day. But I'm sure that the journey of these 12 audiences that would not have been all success every time that. Can you share a few such examples where the experiences were not in line with what we had wanted? And how did you come back from it? Sure. I think the first obviously was this OPS person that we had hired who turned out to be this big, big problem. You know, we also had opened the first two stores in tech parks, which was a great strategy. We got an invoice. Run the head of Krispy Kreme Asia, the Krispy Kreme had just launched in Bangalore at that time and he I took him to our store he said, you know, just repeat this for the next 5 stores. But of course after our second, we thought OK, we know better. So we went ahead and opened then a dining store, which was a mistake it was you know, it was too early it was too expensive now this. So I, I think you know, if, if you, if you have something that works scale that. And then once you've reached a certain scale from that, then add new formats, if you will. Now we've discussed multiple points in this talk about. What have you done? Well, but if I ask if I want you to summarize that last 12 years and and just give a couple of inputs to the fellow restaurant partners on what should they do and what should they not do in running a business like this, what would they be? So I would hesitate to give too much direct advice. You know, I think having a finance mind involved is, is certainly important, especially if if you don't have any background in finance. I could say that I think for us, you know, what's gone well was we generally have made good decisions on real estate. That is often the the killer of a restaurant business. I think we've remained focused on our menu. I think in this day and age, consumers are opting for more of specialists in cuisines rather than generalists who have, you know, six different cuisines on their menu. So I think staying focused has been a good for us. I think that getting into farming has been good for us because. This would this wouldn't have been when you think of that you you know, I never thought we would be into farming, but somewhere in 2018 the idea struck me that if we really wanted to be great in this cuisine that we had to improve our ingredients. Ohh, that's Newman. Now this very few restaurant we have thought about getting a sourcing ingredients from home grown channels. That's definitely a path breaking move. Now comes the most interesting part of the of the session. As a customer, what are your next plans? On California Burrito, but what should I hear new from California burrito other customer? So I think you know, in terms of new, we always keep working on a new protein. So we have a new chicken and new tofu that we test that's running right now. We keep experimenting with snacks and those have rolled out to some probably 10 stores. But I think at the end of the day we we are not too interested in changing much. It's all about incremental improvement in our core product and we've also been incredibly conservative on and adding new cities. I got what I thought was a great piece of advice from the founder of Shoppers Stop. He told me that if you could open 1000 California burritos in Bangalore, do that first and then you can go to the next city. So at some point in the near future, we will do a Mumbai or a Punang, but. Right now, our focus is on the four cities we're in now. If you have a big middle in the two, right, what would you pick? Music or California? I think that's clear. California burrito. Still do music. I have a grand piano in my house I love playing. My neighbors complain sometimes that I stopped playing. Actually I was surprised they could hear it, but some do. They commented the other day they said you have been playing piano in a while, what happened? I said wow. What has been the single biggest order you've delivered from one of your outlets? You know, I think we did a Taco order for 1.2 Lac tacos. That was the largest, not value wise, I think, but in terms of kind of SKU number of products that were delivered. You know, that was a lot. Why, why was the brand name California Burrito? Is there a story behind it? So we had gone to Church Street one day. We printed out the logos on paper and had people pronounce them and, and I kind of think about what these things meant. And while we were doing that, you know, the, the name California Reader struck me. And it struck me because. First off, this format is from California and it's basically the Mission District. So the Mission District, San Francisco is where this kind of restaurant format got popularized. They say that burritos were basically the people working on the railroads back in the 1800s. They would make burritos and that was the lunch that they took. That's basically where the brand name came from. What's your favorite dish from the exhausting menu you have? So I I'm a BBQ chicken burrito. That's my favorite, but BBQ chicken rice. Old people love I think in delivery mushroom actually is very, very popular and salad. But it was great having you in this conversation. I'm sure the people listening to this session will have gotten a lot of insights about how to run a business, how to build a brand like this, and I'm sure if people find time, they'll reach out to you directly for this. Most welcome to I'm available on Instagram. I replied everybody who messages me and great to be here with you and have a chance to. You know, participate because we, it's very important to us.