Brooks restaurateur loves smaller urban areas
The restaurant business is a difficult industry to get into and when the weather, the global economy and tourism aren’t at their highest peaks it can be a little frustrating.
Despite that these hurdles, Deepak Badola and business partner Virender Dangwal took over The Mango Tree and renamed it as the Brooks Pan Flame (1131 2nd Street West) some months ago.
Badola describes business still being good and his family likes it in Brooks having moved here from Calgary.
They also have a sister restaurant in Camrose.
“I love small cities before and so I checked out different communities before buying The Mango Tree,” explains Badola. “I like Brooks. It is a peaceful city, not a lot of violence. My family likes the small city too.”
His plan is to expand and buy another restaurant besides the one in Camrose. At the time of the interview, he was also looking at perhaps purchasing a restaurant in Taber.
Badola’s interest in cooking and restaurants started far soon then hotel management. His delve into cooking began in high school. He would practise cooking in different social circles: with clubs and different friends.
He followed that up going to school and getting formal training to get his professional certifications.
Learning continental, Badola is well versed in Chinese and Thai cooking besides Indian and contemporary Canadian.
Badola loved creating culinary gems. He likes mixing the different cultures of food and has such creations like buttery chicken poutine. There’s a lot of favourites including both butter and tandoori chicken as well as refined flour bread or naan which is flavoured with homemade cheese or garlic or coconut.
The one aspect he wants to remind potential customers and from what he learned is that everyone assumes Indian food is spicy hot. He says this is not the case. Flavour is far more important than the heat of the dish and realizes everyone doesn’t like mouth burning food. The restaurant owner wants people to understand how they make the food and gives them an education.
“We always start with mild spices,” explains Badola. “We always go to tables and then explain how we make the food. Most of the food is gluten and nut-free too.”
They are proud everything is made from scratch. The food when tasted is very fresh including the making of their own cheese.
Badola was a hotel manager which included a five-star restaurant in New Delhi. He came to Canada in 2013 under a work permit. Went back to India and then got his immigration status and was here in Canada by 2015. He has lived in Calgary as well as Kelowna.
It is a lot of hard work for him and he knows the challenges of running a successful business. He is up at 10 a.m. every day and done at 10:30 p.m. at night. It’s a minimum 12 hours per day.
It is worth it though as he loves to keep customers satisfied and whether they are giving him a positive rating on websites or telling him or his staff directly, he loves making sure everyone is satisfied.
“A lot of it is repeat customers and we get a lot of business from travellers coming off the highway,” he explains.
Badola looks to to the meat packing plant the solar plan and the new wheat processing plant that will help business. He is also is hopeful the energy industry will come back strong. He has received assistance from the City of Brooks and other agencies in Brooks with different issues such as marketing, workers, licensing insurance etc.