Brewing hot hot hot...
If you thought Bangalore is the capital of Indian cold beer, think again. The piping hot cutting chai served by Harvard alumni aims to alter India’s beverage habits
These days, ninth-grader Jimmit Shah’s favourite hangout is a tiny but trendy tea-stall off a busy Rajajinagar junction in Bangalore. Whenever the teenaged Shah feels like a stimulating hot drink, which is quite often (before, during and after school), he zooms in on his bicycle to Chai Point, just a half-kilometre away.
Shah got hooked to the hot and stimulating brew by chance, like the 500-odd patrons who frequent the stall every day. He gets high on hot lemon tea costing... hold your breath, just `7 for a 90-ml fix.
After making quick work of the energising ‘cutting chai’ in a transparent glass tumbler, Shah zooms off as quickly as he had materialised, but not before quipping that the “best aspects” of Chai Point, besides the brew itself, are its hygiene and “superfast service”.
Said service takes no longer than 45 seconds from the moment an order is placed. Except the transparent tumblers, no other feature of Chai Point is similar to pavement stalls’.
The seating arrangement - ten chairs around four green tables - complements the yellow-and-green interiors and the fancy red-and-white striped portico of the colourful 200-square-feet stall.
Two copper utensils used to brew tea create a rustic-cum-chic look. Bright menus enliven the walls.
There are 13 such Chai Points in Bangalore serving steaming hot tea in many flavours, made with leaves sourced from Assam, Darjeeling and the Nilgiris.
Mountain Trail Foods, the holding company of Chai Point stalls, started in February 2010 when a group of IIM and Harvard alumni decided to make quality tea available to the working class Indian (aka the “discerning common man”, as distinguished from the ‘anything-goes’ urban snobs and the cussedly picky elite).
“India runs on tea — consumption is really high,” says Amuleek Singh Bijral, founder and CEO, Mountain Trail.
He stresses on “high”, as if to make the word sound so heavy as to indicate the 840 million tonnes of tea that India guzzles annually. The figure is growing, suggest the Tea Board estimates. And to clinch the argument, Bijral states that tea consumption is much higher than the annual consumption of coffee in India.
Yet, strangely, only branded coffee chains, not trendy tea points, were ubiquitous. “If people want tea, they have it from either roadside stalls or regular restaurants,” says Bijral. For the Harvard alumnus and his friends, this was not only an anomaly but a grave injustice to tea-lovers.
It was also a huge opportunity for starting “quality tea” outlets for “people on the move”.
Tejus Chandra, an IIM Bangalore alumnus and the chief financial officer, says Mountain Trail targets tea connoisseurs who crave a quick — really quick — ‘tumbla’ (not cuppa, mind you) with a small bite.
That is why, quick service that teenager Shah raves about defines Chai Point. Even the trendy outlets’ design reflects this philosophy. For the coffee-gulping types who park themselves, and their nifty laptops, at cafes and upscale lounges for hours on end, Chai Point’s quick-service motto might translate to a simple message: “Lay off, thank you.”
Accent at the outlets is on small spaces (usually 200-300 square feet) manned by a crew of two, and located near busy junctions and industrial hubs where there is high chance of finding a large number of tea-lovers. “The outlets are not meant to be based in elitist areas or malls,” says Bijral, as if to reinforce the ethos of Mountain Trail.
It is, however, not so much about anti-elitism as low rentals, lower manpower costs, easy management and modest prices. For instance, the seven flavours now on offer were chosen with a view to clock mass volumes and ensure high acceptability.
Exotic flavours like chamomile could have increased the costs (and the prices), say the founders. So, from the basic Rs-6, 90-ml dum chai to the premium Rs-20, full-glass iced green chai, the flavours range from lemon chai through iced lemon tea, sugar-free tea to masala chai. “We didn’t want to complicate the service by including exotic flavours in the menu. The service has to be within 10-45 seconds,” says Bijral.
To be sure, an array of rolls, pastries and puffs is thrown in for good measure, to please the typical beverage-and-bite Indian consumer.
The combination of familiar flavours, moderate prices and quick service translates to high footfalls, says Chandra. On average, a Chai Point might host up to 500 tea-lovers a day. Smaller outlets (just 130 square feet in size) deliver nearly 80-90 litres of the brew every day to offices in their neighbourhood, to ensure sales volumes.
As people such as the teenaged Shah drink tea several times a day, almost 60-65% of Chai Point’s sales are from repeats, says Chandra. “The pricing has to be modest,” he says, explaining the rationale for the `7 cutting chai. Agrees Bijral. “Prices like six rupees and seven rupees are well within their (repeat drinkers’) reach.”
Oh yes, ratifies Shah. Spending `12-14 daily for two glasses of tea, he says, works out much cheaper than `20 for a cup of coffee or tea in a restaurant or `60 for coffee in a lounge.
A Chai Point, Bijral says, turns profitable within six months of opening. Small wonder, then, that Mountain Trail, having made a scorching start in Bangalore, now wants to expand its ‘chaiprint’ across India. Around 40 more Chai Points are planned by December 2012, including some for the National Capital Region.
If you thought Bangalore is the capital of Indian cold beer, think again. The piping hot cutting chai served by Harvard alumni aims to alter India’s beverage habits
These days, ninth-grader Jimmit Shah’s favourite hangout is a tiny but trendy tea-stall off a busy Rajajinagar junction in Bangalore. Whenever the teenaged Shah feels like a stimulating hot drink, which is quite often (before, during and after school), he zooms in on his bicycle to Chai Point, just a half-kilometre away.
Shah got hooked to the hot and stimulating brew by chance, like the 500-odd patrons who frequent the stall every day. He gets high on hot lemon tea costing... hold your breath, just `7 for a 90-ml fix.
After making quick work of the energising ‘cutting chai’ in a transparent glass tumbler, Shah zooms off as quickly as he had materialised, but not before quipping that the “best aspects” of Chai Point, besides the brew itself, are its hygiene and “superfast service”.
Said service takes no longer than 45 seconds from the moment an order is placed. Except the transparent tumblers, no other feature of Chai Point is similar to pavement stalls’.
The seating arrangement - ten chairs around four green tables - complements the yellow-and-green interiors and the fancy red-and-white striped portico of the colourful 200-square-feet stall.
Two copper utensils used to brew tea create a rustic-cum-chic look. Bright menus enliven the walls.
There are 13 such Chai Points in Bangalore serving steaming hot tea in many flavours, made with leaves sourced from Assam, Darjeeling and the Nilgiris.
Mountain Trail Foods, the holding company of Chai Point stalls, started in February 2010 when a group of IIM and Harvard alumni decided to make quality tea available to the working class Indian (aka the “discerning common man”, as distinguished from the ‘anything-goes’ urban snobs and the cussedly picky elite).
“India runs on tea — consumption is really high,” says Amuleek Singh Bijral, founder and CEO, Mountain Trail.
He stresses on “high”, as if to make the word sound so heavy as to indicate the 840 million tonnes of tea that India guzzles annually. The figure is growing, suggest the Tea Board estimates. And to clinch the argument, Bijral states that tea consumption is much higher than the annual consumption of coffee in India.
Yet, strangely, only branded coffee chains, not trendy tea points, were ubiquitous. “If people want tea, they have it from either roadside stalls or regular restaurants,” says Bijral. For the Harvard alumnus and his friends, this was not only an anomaly but a grave injustice to tea-lovers.
It was also a huge opportunity for starting “quality tea” outlets for “people on the move”.
Tejus Chandra, an IIM Bangalore alumnus and the chief financial officer, says Mountain Trail targets tea connoisseurs who crave a quick — really quick — ‘tumbla’ (not cuppa, mind you) with a small bite.
That is why, quick service that teenager Shah raves about defines Chai Point. Even the trendy outlets’ design reflects this philosophy. For the coffee-gulping types who park themselves, and their nifty laptops, at cafes and upscale lounges for hours on end, Chai Point’s quick-service motto might translate to a simple message: “Lay off, thank you.”
Accent at the outlets is on small spaces (usually 200-300 square feet) manned by a crew of two, and located near busy junctions and industrial hubs where there is high chance of finding a large number of tea-lovers. “The outlets are not meant to be based in elitist areas or malls,” says Bijral, as if to reinforce the ethos of Mountain Trail.
It is, however, not so much about anti-elitism as low rentals, lower manpower costs, easy management and modest prices. For instance, the seven flavours now on offer were chosen with a view to clock mass volumes and ensure high acceptability.
Exotic flavours like chamomile could have increased the costs (and the prices), say the founders. So, from the basic Rs-6, 90-ml dum chai to the premium Rs-20, full-glass iced green chai, the flavours range from lemon chai through iced lemon tea, sugar-free tea to masala chai. “We didn’t want to complicate the service by including exotic flavours in the menu. The service has to be within 10-45 seconds,” says Bijral.
To be sure, an array of rolls, pastries and puffs is thrown in for good measure, to please the typical beverage-and-bite Indian consumer.
The combination of familiar flavours, moderate prices and quick service translates to high footfalls, says Chandra. On average, a Chai Point might host up to 500 tea-lovers a day. Smaller outlets (just 130 square feet in size) deliver nearly 80-90 litres of the brew every day to offices in their neighbourhood, to ensure sales volumes.
As people such as the teenaged Shah drink tea several times a day, almost 60-65% of Chai Point’s sales are from repeats, says Chandra. “The pricing has to be modest,” he says, explaining the rationale for the `7 cutting chai. Agrees Bijral. “Prices like six rupees and seven rupees are well within their (repeat drinkers’) reach.”
Oh yes, ratifies Shah. Spending `12-14 daily for two glasses of tea, he says, works out much cheaper than `20 for a cup of coffee or tea in a restaurant or `60 for coffee in a lounge.
A Chai Point, Bijral says, turns profitable within six months of opening. Small wonder, then, that Mountain Trail, having made a scorching start in Bangalore, now wants to expand its ‘chaiprint’ across India. Around 40 more Chai Points are planned by December 2012, including some for the National Capital Region.
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