‘We offer every consumer ‘meri waali chai’’

Unlike coffee where standardisation to some extent is possible, tea preferences vary greatly across regions, NITIN SALUJA tells Sangeeta Tanwar

How did you identify the business opportunity in chai cafés?

We are a tea drinking nation. A tea café chain was possibly something that was waiting to happen. Imagine, in terms of business opportunity on the consumption side, we are looking at about 30 cups of tea and one cup of coffee. Today, all the coffee brands put together account for 2,000 cafés. In the evolution of coffee cafés, Starbucks has been able to achieve what it has in the West because they are coffee drinking nations. Back in India the question that we asked ourselves was, what is it that the bulk of India is looking for? In the West people wake up and head for their favourite brewery. In India, most of us reach out for a cup of tea. Talk of tea and we realise that Indian kitchens end up with the same brand of tea year after year on their shelves. Unlike coffee where standardisation to some extent is possible, tea preferences vary greatly across north, south, east and west. In fact, within families, every member has a variant of “meri waali chai” (my cup of tea).

Since the tea palate of Indian varies vastly, from day one we decided that however arduous a task it may be but we will offer our customers “meri waalichai”.

Given the varying palate of Indians how have you developed standardised products for consumers with individual choices?

Our starting point was to figure out what kind of tea the country drinks. And the answer to that is, there is no one tea that India drinks. Tea made in my house would be different than that in yours. Within families people make and consume different types of tea. There is no one type of chai. Thus, we decided that we are not going to give you Chaayos tea, rather we will give each consumer “meri waalichai”. So, we custom-make every tea and this calls for extensive training of our boys and girls in the café. We have invested heavily in technology in the background so that we can consistently come up with your (consumer’s) version of cup of tea. With access to a lot of consumer data, we have been able to standardise and perfect our internal processes of picking the right tea leaves, quantity of ginger, sugar and other ingredients to serve up “meri waalichai”. This way ordering becomes easy. The objective is to perfect the ability of making the same cup of tea (according to individual preferences) over and over again. The idea is to ensure that every customer looks at Chaayos with a high degree of reliability of getting her own variant of a cup of tea every time she visits Chaayos. The moment we do this, it is game won for us.

Having started in late 2012, Chaayos now has an extensive food menu as well. This has seen your average ticket size go up. So, what are the innovations driving your food experiments?

Our average ticket size with tea and food included is ~250. It is natural behaviour for people to ask for something to eat with tea. We have been tapping into this need. Over the last five years, our food menu has become more conducive for all day consumption. Now we have food offerings that consumers can pick from morning to night to go with tea. This roundness of the food menu has come about as a result of constant innovation. For example, we wanted to come up with a paratha offering for a good two years. Initially, we came up with a stuffed paratha but soon realised that we could not keep it crisp and super savoury. After working on it for two years, we ditched it. Next, we got a Malabar paratha saying we will not put anything inside the paratha but put the stuffing on top of it. People lapped it up calling it a desi pizza with the stuffing on top.

With changing consumption behaviour and preferences, consumers today are open to experimenting and trying new things. And this works in our favour. Our Malabar paratha goes well with lunch and dinner. We also have mutton cutlet and bun samosa. The entire spread of the menu is centred on chai. We run our own kitchen spread across 2,000 square feet with 35 people. The food is directly delivered to our cafés from this centralised kitchen.

With changing consumption behaviour and preferences, consumers today are open to experimentation. This works in our favour