Manik and Rajat Kapoor’s popular F&B brands Gola Sizzlers and Café Hawkers in Delhi-NCR have struck a chord with diners with their right location, good food quality, right target audience and a good marketing team. The brothers, who want to take their brands to more locations within NCR and other metros, spell out their vision and plans for the future in a chat with FoodService India.
Tell us about your restaurant brand and what they are known for?
Manik Kapoor: Our brands Gola Sizzlers and Café Hawkers are a Delhi-based casual fine dine restaurant and cafe chain with outlets in Delhi-NCR. The two brands are part of the Gola Group, which was founded in 1988 with Gola Banquets. The first Gola Sizzlers casual dining restaurant was launched in 1992 in CP. Today, the brand has a presence in different locations in Delhi/ NCR and is famous for its lip-smacking smoking sizzlers. Our outlets – The Gola Sizzlers CP, The Gola Sizzlers Rajouri Garden, The Gola Sizzlers Ambience Mall, The Gola Sizzlers Noida, Café Hawkers CP and Café Hawkers, Ansal Plaza – are known for serving sizzlers and new varieties of cuisines.
What is your value-for-money proposition for diners and which are your key customer segments?
Rajat Kapoor: Our sizzlers are a complete meal in itself. We also have different food varieties, which satiate everybody’s taste buds. Our key customer segments are families and youth.
Which are your best-selling products and what is the price range?
Manik Kapoor: The best selling products of Gola Sizzlers are cheese cutlet and cottage cheese shaslik sizzler in veg and chicken breast sizzler in non-veg. Other popular offerings include vegetable manchurian sizzler, spring roll, keema kulcha, chicken tikka sizzler, chicken pasta, Chinese sizzlers, among others.
A plate of sizzler is enough to tingle the tastebuds of more than two people as it comes in huge generous portions. The price of a sizzler plate ranges between Rs 600 and Rs 700.
How would you describe your brand’s key achievements and what do you attribute them to?
Rajat Kapoor: Our biggest achievement has been to establish our brand The Gola Sizzlers as a popular and landmark dining destination in some of the best eating-out locations in Delhi-NCR. As it is said, ‘right ingredients make a right dish’, similarly there are some elements that goes in making a good restaurant – right location, good quality, right target audience and a good marketing team. Our restaurants have all of these qualities apart from the goodwill of our patrons who have contributed to the success of our brand.
Can you offer us examples of some innovative F&B ideas that you have implemented?
Rajat Kapoor: We focus on our content more than anything else and we make sure that our big portions and generous servings are delicious to tickle the taste buds and leave you heartily satiated.
In terms of your investment and expansion, what are your short-term and long-term plans?
Manik Kapoor: We’re already coming up with a new lounge and bar in Connaught Place soon. Over the next three years, we have plans to launch over 10- 12 more outlets across Delhi. By fiscal 2018-19, we aim to create, build and operate over 10-12 outlets in Delhi-NCR. Gola Sizzlers currently employs over 200 people across restaurants and logistics and back-end space and we will be employing over 500-600 employees by next fiscal year.
We’re also looking to expand our business in some other metros as well. The goal is to emerge as a brand name known for being the best pick-up place for food, be it for sizzlers or any other dish. We want Gola Sizzlers and Café Hawkers to have top brand recall in people’s mind when they set out to choose a restaurant.
