QSR's mantra for success

By Ajay Khanna

Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) business is growing at a fast pace in India. The organised QSR business in the country is estimated to be over Rs 20 billion and has been growing at a CAGR of around 40 per cent. With a 100 million potential fast food customers, both domestic and international players are vying with each other for a slice of this pie. To expand as well as to survive in this highly competitive market, it has become imperative for all QSR chains to constantly innovate and sustain the quality of food and service they offer.

Food quality is the most fundamental component of a restaurant. It takes into account various constituents like quality of the raw material, hygiene conditions in the kitchen, taste, etc. Serving quality food every time is a given and in today’s highly competitive environment far from being considered as a USP it is treated as a factor for success in the restaurant business.

Along with food quality the other integral component of any restaurant’s success is the service. Employees need to be active and fast and be able to anticipate and satisfy all of the customers’ needs. Regular customers need to be welcomed back on each visit and by utilising guest history programmes, one can more easily satisfy them by already knowing what will make the customer happy. Such employees are an asset for any restaurant. The employees should be persons who love their work and are generally happy overall. Happy employees set customers at ease and allow them to enjoy their meals even more. The pillars for any successful multi outlet QSR chain are

Training:
A QSR should invest extensively in the training of its existing employees as well as new recruits. Training should be based upon competency mapping for the existing employees.At Nirula’s, training is used as a tool for career development. Not only the front staff but also the backend staff should undergo a rigorous training programme to ensure seamless service at all touch points. New recruits should be treated at par in terms of emoluments from day one and not paid stipends etc to save on labour costs.

Quality assurance
The QSR industry employs Quality Assurance along with innovative technology as the two major tools to sustain and improve quality. The food industry has various quality assurance (QA) systems to ensure food safety and quality and to build and maintain the trust of consumers. Systems such as Hygiene code, HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points), ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) and BRC (British Retail Consortium) are used.

Supply chain management
Supply Chain management plays a vital role in assuring the quality of the food. In addition to conventional audit programs, many restaurant chains mandate that their suppliers implement Statistical Process Control (SPC) programs. These programs improve food quality and safety while decreasing purchasing costs.

Manpower management
Manpower is the most valuable asset of any organisation and much more so in service industry. At Nirula’s while like other QSR chains we have various incentive programs which are sales driven – however we also have a number of incentives and a Reward and Recognition program which takes into account a host of other soft factors such as customer service, cross line cost efficacy measures and so on. Such initiatives ensure that people across the organisation are recognised for their efforts even if these efforts do not directly translate into sales and this ensures that ideas can come in from any quarter.

A combination of all these factors put together becomes the foundation of the assurance of quality service and food to customers. It becomes very important for an organisation to have all these aspects in place to delivery happy smiles to customers and achieve success.

Ajay Khanna is vice president, operations at Nirula’s. Views expressed are personal. Detailed Profile