A delicious book
Restaurants reflect the personalities of people who own or run them. They are businesses that are a product of a certain culture and milieu, reflect certain lifestyles and, at their most successful, cater to people who share the same cultural values or environment. In this they are unlike many other businesses, wherein people are less important then processes.”… This is a paragraph from the book.
The book is about, what makes restaurants sizzle or fizzle out. I have not come across another book on the subject so far. Book is divided into three parts. First part talks about little bit of history. Unfortunately, the author doesn’t go beyond Mughal period. Then the author talks about failures and success of restaurants in details with lots of facts and figures, gives a picture of international market, then covers in details the reasons of success and failures of restaurants in India.
In second part of the book, 13 successful restaurant founders, has been covered. One of the findings is not surprising at all i.e. one of the most common reason for the failure of modern-day restaurant is the PE fund or the investor, who looks for unreasonable growth without understanding what has been mentioned in the top most paragraph here. The thirteen stories cover all possible kind of restaurants operating in India and offers deep insights into the restaurant business. The third part talks of financial numbers of some of the restaurants and then goes on to cover publicity, public relation and social media. The learnings from these two chapters will come as a surprise to many. And yes, the book also talks about the business of bars.
The book is well-written and covers all possible aspects of running a restaurant in India. Anyone who has any kind of interest in restaurant, starting from a consumer to investor, employee to employer, chef to owner, will find the book useful. The concept of ‘fine dinning’ will be an eye-opener for many and it is not related to being expensive. Overall it is a delicious book.