to the airhostess. I chose an Economist and walked back to my seat. The renowned music director, stage performer and singer was once more immersed in his music. But not next to me. The airhostess had accommodated him elsewhere, a good three rows and fifteen feet ahead of me. Any further and he would have been seated in the cockpit.
Later, in the middle of the flight, our eyes met once but he quickly looked away, as though afraid that I would again start talking to him about my African filmmaker friends. It wasn’t a happy flight and it was a disturbing half an hour after the flight. England had crashed out of the FIFA World Cup, beaten by Germany. Netherlands, on the other hand, was going strong. Peggy called to tell me that the English mancom members were so crushed after the team’s performance that they had lost the will to fight for management control. The Dutch, boosted by their team’s unexpected performance, were gung-ho about their presentations and were clearly getting the better of the Englishmen in every debate. It looked like some of the plum posts at the senior levels would go to the Dutch. If that happened, all the good work done by us so far would be undone.
I needed something really good to pull me out of my depression and I found it: bingeing on my favourite comfort food at Kitch’s restaurants. I loved it. In fact, I would have no objection at all to making this a full-time profession – pigging out at restaurants and coming up with some important sounding comments at the end of the day. In this case, however, I think we managed to put together some pretty useful feedback at the end of day two. We agreed that two of the waiters were pulling down the ambience with their approach. We found that a very slight change in the arrangement of the tables would help accommodate four more chairs, always useful during peak hours. We calculated that the time spent bringing the bill to the table took up to seven minutes on average. This reduced the turnover as those who didn’t find a table immediately tended to walk across to ‘Raman Idli’, the restaurant located just opposite Kitch’s. The food there was not as tasty as Kitch’s, the place was not air-conditioned and the waiters tended to be sloppy, but they had much more space and many more tables. We spent some time working out numbers on a proposed profit-sharing arrangement with the waiters and the cooks. We also considered a few common tricks followed by some of the other eateries in town, like leaving bottled water on each table. The margins on drinks were much higher than on food. Getting customers to drink water, juice or milk-based drinks would raise profits significantly. We knew of a restaurant that charged separately for milagai podi (a specially blended chilli powder which many North Indians refer to as ‘gunpowder’) and oil if they wanted that along with their idli, sambar and chutney. We also considered keeping the price per idli low and charging for every serve of accompaniments.
‘I wish I could buy out that restaurant opposite ours,’ Kitch said. ‘Then all the restaurants on this road would be ours. Maybe we will not air-condition that one. If it’s too comfortable, people just hang around longer and the spend per minute goes down. There is no point air-conditioning a restaurant if it keeps potential customers waiting outside.’
On the second day, we had dinner at Kitch’s house. His parents weren’t too bucked about our new business ideas. ‘You make all kinds of high-flying plans,’ Kitch’s father admonished him. ‘And we have to spend most of our time trying to implement them.’
There was more berating and his father wondered aloud whether sending Andy to Dubai was the best thing that could have been done under the circumstances. ‘Maybe we should have encouraged him to help run the restaurants,’ he said. ‘After all, what is the point of having two sons if both of them live abroad?’
Kitch’s mother turned to
Later, in the middle of the flight, our eyes met once but he quickly looked away, as though afraid that I would again start talking to him about my African filmmaker friends. It wasn’t a happy flight and it was a disturbing half an hour after the flight. England had crashed out of the FIFA World Cup, beaten by Germany. Netherlands, on the other hand, was going strong. Peggy called to tell me that the English mancom members were so crushed after the team’s performance that they had lost the will to fight for management control. The Dutch, boosted by their team’s unexpected performance, were gung-ho about their presentations and were clearly getting the better of the Englishmen in every debate. It looked like some of the plum posts at the senior levels would go to the Dutch. If that happened, all the good work done by us so far would be undone.
I needed something really good to pull me out of my depression and I found it: bingeing on my favourite comfort food at Kitch’s restaurants. I loved it. In fact, I would have no objection at all to making this a full-time profession – pigging out at restaurants and coming up with some important sounding comments at the end of the day. In this case, however, I think we managed to put together some pretty useful feedback at the end of day two. We agreed that two of the waiters were pulling down the ambience with their approach. We found that a very slight change in the arrangement of the tables would help accommodate four more chairs, always useful during peak hours. We calculated that the time spent bringing the bill to the table took up to seven minutes on average. This reduced the turnover as those who didn’t find a table immediately tended to walk across to ‘Raman Idli’, the restaurant located just opposite Kitch’s. The food there was not as tasty as Kitch’s, the place was not air-conditioned and the waiters tended to be sloppy, but they had much more space and many more tables. We spent some time working out numbers on a proposed profit-sharing arrangement with the waiters and the cooks. We also considered a few common tricks followed by some of the other eateries in town, like leaving bottled water on each table. The margins on drinks were much higher than on food. Getting customers to drink water, juice or milk-based drinks would raise profits significantly. We knew of a restaurant that charged separately for milagai podi (a specially blended chilli powder which many North Indians refer to as ‘gunpowder’) and oil if they wanted that along with their idli, sambar and chutney. We also considered keeping the price per idli low and charging for every serve of accompaniments.
‘I wish I could buy out that restaurant opposite ours,’ Kitch said. ‘Then all the restaurants on this road would be ours. Maybe we will not air-condition that one. If it’s too comfortable, people just hang around longer and the spend per minute goes down. There is no point air-conditioning a restaurant if it keeps potential customers waiting outside.’
On the second day, we had dinner at Kitch’s house. His parents weren’t too bucked about our new business ideas. ‘You make all kinds of high-flying plans,’ Kitch’s father admonished him. ‘And we have to spend most of our time trying to implement them.’
There was more berating and his father wondered aloud whether sending Andy to Dubai was the best thing that could have been done under the circumstances. ‘Maybe we should have encouraged him to help run the restaurants,’ he said. ‘After all, what is the point of having two sons if both of them live abroad?’
Kitch’s mother turned to
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