Firdaus is not the result of a planned exercise to set up a Biryani serving Quick Service Restaurant. It is the serendipitous offshoot of a Discovery, Realisation and Opportunity, that was ready to be seized.
Mid 2013 marked the beginning of my tryst with food trials. Fresh from the Bizquest 2012 win, we were high on spirits. Although, the Hyderabad Angels' term sheet did not materialise into actual funds flow ( Interesting case study for start ups seeking angel funding, I will probably write another blog post on this some other time) the resulting uncertainty (coffers drying up, i guess we already ran out of cash by then) did little to kill the excitement and buzz. One of the reasons probably was, had we taken the money from Hyderabad Angels, we would have had to do away with Pescetarian, our dream Seafood Speciality Quick Service Restaurant initiative. The mandate in the Terms Sheet was that we should only open Raw Seafood Outlets (GoodFish) and expand existing B2B (Shoal) Operations.
Armed with a small trial production team, we have systematically started food trials for opening a Pescetarian Seafood Speciality Quick Service Restaurant (QSR). We tried to pick up best of the fish based items among indian and international favourites cutting across cuisines with the common thread being that it should be made of fish. In Indian cuisine, we picked up legendary favourites like, Nellore Chapala Pulusu (Spicy and Tangy Fish Stew), Kakinada Peethala Iguru (Crab Curry), Bheemavaram Royyala Iguru (Prawn Curry) for main course. Considering, the first restaurant would be opened in Hyderabad and considering Hyderabadis love Biryani, it had to figure out somewhere in the menu. We then decided, why not do an authentic Hyderabadi Fish & Prawn Dum Biryani. Everything would be the same, the ingredients, cooking process but for the meat. Instead of Chicken or Mutton we would use Fish & Prawn.
A little about our approach towards food trials. The bottom line of the exercise is only one metric. Create an outstanding product, that compels the customer to revisit the restaurant again and again. Do not mistake this as an effort to create a perfect product. No, that was not the intention. I strongly believe, there is nothing called as a perfect product that will equally, appeal to the eyes, nose and tongue of all the customers. Any such goal would be idealistic. The idea was to create a product that would be liked by 70 percent of the consumers. Considering, rating food is a very subjective exercise depending on individual tastes and likings, we thought any more aggressive target will throw us of the track and defeat the whole purpose of the exercise. Once we discover the recipe that is liked by 70% of our team, we will freeze on it and then focus on making it consistently right if not better than the previous time. Basically refine the recipe and standardise it for consistent results. Finally, document it in the form of recipe, ingredients weight in grams and a Standard Operations Procedure (SOP) for training purposes, to ensure repeatability and reproducibility. In another words, irrespective of who makes the dish and how many ever number of times one makes, the output in terms, of quantity and quality should be the same.We chose experimentation/trial and error as our approach for this. Basically, make three to four variants of the preparation, choose the best among them and refine it further.
 |
| One of the first batches of Biryani |
Coming to the Biryani part, for Santosh who was leading the food trials, cooking Biryani was nothing new. He had been employed previously in a Hyderabadi Biryani chain and as a part of that role dished out thousands of Biryanis. But the point here is to not dish out any biryani. It had to be compellingly good. So our first experimentation was with fish biryani. Although the biryani was tasty, it was far from earth shattering. The second and third trials had mixed results like, biryani getting burnt, too less cooking time resulting in water being left out.
Right from the start Santosh was unhappy about the Utensils we chose to cook Biryani and the quantity we were attempting to cook in the trial. He was of the opinion that we were trying to cook too less a Biryani and hence process standardisation and consistency in the results was too much to ask for. He was pretty confident that he was getting the ingredients right, it is only the vessel and quantum of heat that was making the difference. In hind sight, he was right about every single observation he made. But, considering I am not some one who takes No for an answer, I insisted on continuing the experiment the way it is.
 |
| We nailed it! |
So, every 3rd day in a week we would cook Biryani, alternating between Fish and Prawn. One fine day, he produced this Fish Biryani and the entire production and support teams were full of praise. They loved it. Exactly, three days later Santosh cooked another round of Prawn Biryani with some Vannamei 24 count prawns. I regret not taking the photographs of that Biryani, but when we ate, we knew, we nailed it.
To Be Continued.
