Swaminathan Balasubramanian
Paya is one of the popular South Indian traditional dishes. This serves as an excellent side dish for South Indian breakfasts such as idli, dosa, kal-dosai, idiyappam, and North Indian items such as chapati, poori, phulka, roti and more. Nazar Idiyappam Paya Unavagam restaurant, specializes in that recepie is located in Thanjavur, in Tamil Nadu stands unique for providing delicious, authentic non-veg food of Tamil Nadu. Known for its taste, this outlet gets 90% of the local crowd and 10% of the traveler’s crowd, having located in the highways.
Market insights critical:
Sahul and his brother Nazar runs the restaurant for close to 40 years. Sahul firmly believes that in an area of high competition, the unique aspect of a hotel comes out in three aspects 1. understanding the customers, 2. seamless collaboration between the kitchen and the dining area, and most important is the taste without compromising quality.
“Understanding the customer and their lifestyle is the most critical aspect of running the hotel. For example, we serving non-veg food track the calenders completely to understand the dates of the festivals, fasting days, and days dedicated to conducting holy rituals. Thus, we will plan our sales and customize the menu accordingly”, says Shahul who further added that stocking of the products well in-advance during rains or the time of other natural calamities is important today. Sahul also advises fellow hoteliers to have a log on the eating trends. In other words, a hotelier should be smart enough to say which product will move at what speed at what time.
Unorganized work-force:
Sahul raises concerns about the unorganized and unstable workforce in restaurants across India. “The lack of women workforce in this sector for the kitchen and serving people could be the main reason for the challenge. While women workforce had overtaken the men in sectors like education, retail, healthcare, deploying them only for cleaning and washing doesn’t serve the industry demand.”, says Sahul further adding that commitment from women workforce in terms of dedication, meeting deadlines cannot be replaced.
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Managing guests on-premise and digit:
Speaking about the need for increasing customer satisfaction, Sahul says, patience is the key for a restaurant owner to be intact with the customer. “Guests enter our premises with different mindsets. It is our[hoteliers] duty to serve them what they need. Having located in the highway, chances are that, we get customers who are on the go and do a pitstop at our restaurant”, he says further added that for any restaurant owners, managing two customers today is a challenge- one who enters the premises under the influence of alcohol and the other who are the keyboard warriors who take our outlets on the digital world. “The serving staff should have been trained enough to tackle the people who are alcoholic and any disturbance in serving, will not only impact the business but also will be a nuisance to other guests too. While we cannot stop the negative reviews, we can address their concerns and issues or at least give an explanation if they are wrong.”, he concluded.
The siblings-run brand has three outlets in Thanjavur with a centralized kitchen managing the demand-supply of the outlets. While they do not have any expansion plans, their focus right now is to provide the best value to their customers.
