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| Edited By: Ashish K Tiwari |Source: DNA |Updated: Apr 04, 2018, 05:50 AM IST
Hardcastle Restaurants, a McDonald’s master franchisee in India since 1996 with rights to own and operate quick-service restaurants (QSRs) across west and south markets, is seeking status of a trend-setter in the QSR space through its innovations and industry-first initiatives. Amit Jatia, vice-chairman, Westlife Development Ltd (that owns Hardcastle Restaurants), in conversation with Ashish K Tiwari, speaks about how the brand is redefining QSR consumer experience in the country.
Being leaders in the food business, our philosophy has been to redefine the consumer journey with QSRs. Did you ever imagine a table service at McDonald’s restaurant or for that matter a self-ordering kiosk with card-swipe facility for payments? Probably not. But that’s happening today especially at our experience of the future (EOTF) stores.
We’ve redefined consumer experience without anybody telling us that this is what they want. As we expand and roll out new stores in the market, all this will become a benchmark in the QSR market. I think, more and more restaurants will eventually start moving in that direction. With our show-and-tell approach, we are doing things that are foundationally right from a consumer’s point of view and for the business.
We’ve been innovating/re-engineering our menu and introducing health-focused food items across restaurants at regular intervals over the last couple of years. Building on the nutritive and wholesome food theme, the good food story is bringing all of that together while adding a few newer initiatives. For instance, the preservative-free patties while still maintaining the taste is not an easy thing to do. The second one is aloo tikki (potato patties), which is part of a balanced meal as recommended by National Institution of Nutrition. The third one is the dietary fibre that reduces oil absorption and adds more incremental nutritional value.
It as a journey when you see it all together. A McDonald’s outlet today is very different from what it was three years ago. My point behind this story is that it’s a different brand in various ways: the look and feel of the restaurants, technology being used, a re-engineered menu that not only offers a variety but is also wholesome and nutritional. McDonald’s began India operations promising safe food with high-quality ingredients. This was followed by variety it offered in the menu--the food forms like wraps, naan ancnd dosa masala burger. The current journey is focused on ‘wholesome and nutrition’.
This is just the beginning of our journey and between 75% and 80% of our products are in that zone already.
As we speak, the vision of what we want to do is already there. Very soon you will see us come up with more stuff. The idea is it’s very simple. It’s not about fast food but good food and we want our consumers to feel good about eating the food at McDonald’s.
It will but that’s not the only motive driving us. What we are saying here is that consumer expectations are changing and McDonald’s is going to set these consumer trends. You mark my words, five years from now, every industry player will bring these things to consumers in the QSR space.
It certainly does (impact the cost) but we’ve been able to absorb that fortunately because of the good same-store sales growth. The idea is not to pass on the cost if we can absorb it. Sometimes there is a cost also and that time, we have to weigh consumer benefits versus cost. However, at this point, we are able to absorb the (incremental) cost. We will manage this within our menu-price increase ranging between 3% to 5% annually.
This doesn’t affect us. What they are saying is roasting of coffee beans does this. Basically, when you roast (coffee beans) a chemical is generated and that may or may not be good. But it’s not been proven and is still a mysterious subject right now.
