Kwality Group forayed into the bakery and confectionery industry as a chief franchisee of Hot Breads, a country-wide chain of bakery outlets. Gradually, it went on to introduce its own chain of bakers and confectionery in the year 2000 with Bread & More – an authentic French Café, which, over the years, established itself as the neighbourhood café famous for its cakes, breads and snacks. The brand has now revamped its outlet at Delhi’s posh N-Block Market in GK 1, and opened a new one at Vasant Vihar. The newly named Bread et More, in its all-new patisserie and boulangerie avatar, is filled with a vintage aroma of Paris and Belgium with its international offerings of baked sweetmeats, European-style custom cakes, savories, artisan breads, and health products. Sahil Mehta, Assistant Vice President, Kwality Restaurant & Ice Cream Co, discusses the brand’s make over
Please share the ideation and concept behind the brand’s make over from a neighbourhood café to a high-end patisserie.
Bread et More has been re-positioned as a classic Parisian style patisserie/ boulangerie, and is based on a concept gives a modern twist to traditional European style bakery and confectionary products. We found a great vacuum existing in bakery set-up in the city, where high quality products were an elite preserve available at a select few places at exorbitantly high prices. We wanted to bring these top-notch products to customers at a good price in a great ambience.
Does this mean a more niche target audience?
While a lot of our customers are expats and the well traveled, our product line is amenable to various prices sensitivities, and we have something on offer irrespective of taste orientation or budget restraint. Our target threshold endeavors to cater to the needs of the metropolitan citizen of different age groups and economic sub groups, for both occasion specific purchases and daily use.
What has been the response to the brand’s new look ?
The response so far has been very encouraging; we have been able to carve a unique niche, where the customer is appreciating the quality on offer at an affordable price. We have also been able to break the mould of traditional players in the market by offering a range of unique authentic European products meant for daily consumption, at times there have been challenges in educating consumers about novel products, but we have managed to make promising inroads.
What are the operational challenges?
Our aim and challenge is to keep ahead of the curve in an increasingly crowded space with various foreign brands vying for a piece of the limited market, and not to isolate local tastes and flavors when bringing in a European inspired concept.
We plan well in advance to ensure that we do not have any shortages in raw materials that come from abroad as a number of our high quality products are dependent on them. This also requires the provision of high capacity storage facilities and appropriate temperature control supply chain management. Recruitment for such a quality conscious concept also has to take place after scanning the best of local and international talent.
Do you plan to open more stores?
Our second outlet has recently come up at Vasant Vihar in Delhi. Now, we are looking to fully explore the NCR market with 10-12 openings slated for the next 2 years. We are looking at many different types of formats ranging from 250 sqft kiosks to proper cafe facilities extending to 1500 sqft. Investment and infrastructure would depend on whether one follows a central commissary or bake-at-sight format, and whether one is willing to bear the significant additional costs of purchasing imported equipment that certain product categories are reliant on.
