“One plate of garlic
bread, one medium Veggie Delight pizza, and a bottle of Coke”
“Apple pie with icecream!”
one of the kids shouted. “Mummy please order the apple pie, please!”
“Alright alright! One of aunty’s apple pies as
well. Yes, that’ll be all, thanks”
In the quaint little town
of Rajpurgaon, Uncle’s Pizza was a legend of sorts. It was set up in the early
90s by an enterprising gift shop owner, Chhoturam, and had been serving the city’s
populace for close to 20 years now. The idea first occurred to him over dinner
with a few friends with whom he had recently been on a trip to Delhi, and that
was the first time the small-town man had ever tried Pizza.
“This thing is good, and
shouldn’t take much to prepare too” he came back and told his wife. Mrs.Leela
Chhoturam asked her cousin in Mumbai to send across pizza buns, and bought
cheese from the one shop in the whole of Rajpurgaon that stocked the small Amul
cubes. Ketchup was used instead of the usual sauce for the base, and over 6-7
attempts, she started making a decent pizza. Everyone at home loved it, and
when she shared with the neighbours, they were delighted as well. Chhoturam,
who had been contemplating opening another gift stop in the plot he had next to
the lake, shifted his focus on opening a small restaurant instead.
“We’ve been making people
happy with gifts, let’s try it with food now” he thought
Response wasn’t very
encouraging at the start, but that was just how Chhoturam had anticipated. In a
town where Daal-Roti and Samosa were staples, why would someone want to pay considerably
higher for a bread with some vegetables on it? But slowly the curiosity factor
and the changing generational preferences worked in Chhoturam’s favour, as did
the brilliant location next to the lake where people came to relax in the
evening. Word spread about the new eatery and it’s “phoren” offerings, and crowd
started trickling in. Some other small eateries also set up shop adjacent to
the lake, and it began evolving into a tourist location.
Over the years, Uncle’s
pizza established a strong presence in the hearts of the city’s populace. Many
families were regulars on Sundays, the who’s-who of the town drew up their
Mercedes’ to have a taste occasionally, the place was used frequently for
birthdays and celebrations, and there was hardly a visitor to the town who wasn’t
advised to pay it a visit for “the best pijja in India”. Chhoturam, who was referred
to as uncle, made it a point to treat his customers as family, and checked on
each and every table if they were satisfied. The gift shop was managed by one
of his sons now, and though there was clearly an opportunity to open another
restaurant, he was against the idea for fear of not being able to maintain the
USP.
On one of the mornings
when there were a few regulars having coffee and Chhoturam was sipping tea next
to the billing counter, he noticed a half-page ad in the newspaper announcing
the opening of Robobig café in the lake area next week. Robobig, an
international café chain that started in the USA, served continental cuisine;
pastas, pizzas, paninis and the like. It had been doing brisk business in most
of the Indian metros since it entered in 2005, and was now looking to grow by
riding on the ambitions of the tier-2 towns. Six ads followed the first, one
each day upto the inauguration of the café done by a local celebrity, and the
last one even announced a free mini pizza to anyone who brought along a copy of
the ad on the first day. Within a couple of months of its opening, Robobig was
already a rage. It was the newest destination in town, and people went there to
be considered in touch with times. The plasticky cutlery and the dismal self-service
facility were overlooked because of the cool quotient, and everyone in town was
talking about whether they had tried the huge variety of options on the menu.
Robobig’s flagship lake
store was twice the size of Uncle’s pizza, and it obviously hurt Chhoturam’s
business. With his volumes, he could not match their prices or deals, and with
people moving to where their friends went, Uncle’s pizza began losing the game.
Chhoturam started doing home deliveries, but then the investment in bikes didn’t
seem to be yielding much result and was distracting his son from the gift shop
as well. Over time, his restaurant began to be visited by only hard-core
loyalists who went there for old times’ sake, but even that number seemed to
be diminishing at a fast pace. Business was beginning to get from bad to worse,
and the situation wasn’t at the least encouraging.
“Papa, Gupta uncle called yesterday. We need
to pay the rent by next week, it’s already overdue by 3 months” Chotturam’s son
mentioned on his way to the store late one evening “And a couple of tables at
the restaurant have been giving way, we need to replace them.”
“Things are really falling
apart, aren’t they” Chhoturam surmised.
The next day, he consulted
his wife and made the decision. It was painful, the restaurant had become so
intertwined with his life, but then it had also become a burden that he couldn’t
afford anymore. He put out an ad in the papers that Uncle’s pizza will be
shutting shop after three days, and till then he would be offering all items at
a 50% discounted price. There was a brief buzz for the next three days, with
people coming and trying to show their concern for the store. Regulars took
photos on their favourite tables and promised to keep in touch, and on the last
day, the Chhoturam family went home with mixed feelings, sad at the closure but
satisfied to have touched the lives of so many around them.
The owner of the Robobig
franchise in the town, Mr.Sharma, seized the opportunity and opened a couple of
more stores at the other ends of the town. He also sealed a deal to open a store
of Cookie-Cutter, a confectionary and desserts chain that was a sister concern
of Robobig. Some weeks later, one evening when Sharma’s ten year-old daughter got back from
school, she was beaming.
“How was your day, beta?”
“Great dad! Today we had a
minister as a chief guest for one of the functions, and the principal introduced
me as the owner of the biggest fast food chains in the city. I felt very good!”
“That’s quite nice of her”
“You know, I have an idea
to make our restaurants even better!”
“Sure, go ahead and tell
me” Sharma indulged her “But have some of this chocolate cake first, I’ve just
got it from our store”
“Dad, all of our shops
look and feel so same, everything is so standardized! When we went to the Robobig
cafes or the Cookie-cutter stores in Bengaluru and Kolkata too, it was nothing different,
it’s just how it is here” She took a spoonful of the cake “For example, Uncle’s
pizza place was quite nice, with uncle always remembering his customers and
being there to amuse us. If we add something unique to our cafes, like a memory
board that they had or a special dish like aunty’s apple pie, it will be nice
no?”
No comments:
Post a Comment