Hospitality industry veteran Subroto Mukherjee, who joined Burgs in 2012 as COO, intends to make Burgs a brand synonymous with burgers.
How has Burg evolved since its launch?
Burgs is a gourmet burger company started by industrialist Sanjay Kilachand and his son Krishna Kilachand with the idea of bringing quality gourmet burgers to the Indian consumer.
Now, although the depth and width of the offering have been greatly enhanced with the introduction of side dishes, salads and beverages, it continues to maintain the hand-crafted range, without compromising on quality and taste.
What are the challenges in the QSR format in an emerging market like India?
The foremost challenge is the price of real estate that directly affects the way we operate and grow. Other barriers to trade is the lack of cold chain and basic infrastructure in the country for rapid expansion. Along with this, lack of quality manpower and slow state of the economy affects the food business adversely.
Why has your brand been concentrated in Mumbai only?
We have resisted the urge for rapid expansion into multiple cities as it is very important to consolidate in the region and city first, build efficiencies and enjoy the scale up to achieve our current milestones of consolidation and brand establishment.
Foreign players are aggressively increasing their stake in the Indian QSR segment. What are your strategies to counter competition?
We welcome the entry of foreign players in every food and retail format as it actually increases competition and helps local brands learn, constantly innovate and strategise to increase market share. The population is so large, and lack of better options has been a challenge. The entry of more players in various segments actually fuels growth and increases the total market size.
What is your marketing strategy?
Food business largely works on initiating trial and that is what we have been doing very successfully. In fact, our entire growth engine is based on getting newer customers, retaining the existing ones, and then driving their frequency of visit.
We have learnt over a period of time that the consumer needs to be given greater choices along with reasonable pricing so that they derive maximum value.
The key to success is to be able to achieve a tipping point through controlling costs, bringing down ROIs, reducing capex and passing on maximum price correction to the customer.
What is your estimated turnover?
It is still early days to comment on exact figures since we have barely existed for 12 months but we hope to maintain a CAGR of more than 30 percent in steady state operations.
