Rushabh
April 29th, 2003, 04:52 PM
NY Times article on vegetarian fast food in India (including McDonalds) (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/29/business/worldbusiness/29FAST.html?8hpib)
Separate vegetarian kitchen in McDonalds!
All non-veg cooks in McDonalds forbidden to enter veg kitchen without showering!
A paradise for vegs.
Full article:
------------------------------------
Tastes of India in U.S. Wrappers
By SARITHA RAI
OMBAY — In Lokhandwala, a prosperous Bombay suburb, Ashok Narayanan and his wife, Rathi, like to step out in the evening for a "slice of America."
Their first stop is the brightly lighted McDonald's, where their two children — Karan, 9, and Kavya, 7 — jostle with other youngsters at the counters as uniformed employees serve up burgers and fries from an open kitchen.
Then, with their sated kids in tow, Ashok, a commodity broker, and Rathi, a feng-shui practitioner, walk around the corner to a Subway outlet and order salads and footlong sandwiches for themselves.
American fast food chains are all but reinventing themselves for India, hoping to escape being tarred as unhealthy and uncool, as they have been elsewhere. Fast food is growing rapidly in and around India's major cities, and the two best-known American chains here, McDonald's and Subway, are bidding to dominate the Indian market by tailoring their menus to local tastes. Their offerings here, liberally flavored with Indian spices, bear little resemblance to the American originals, and their networks are poised for rapid expansion in India despite the war in Iraq and the slump in the global economy.
The battle is particularly interesting in and around Bombay, India's financial capital and its largest fast food market, where competing outlets are often a few feet apart.
Here McDonald's, the world's biggest purveyor of beef, does not sell its iconic Big Mac or any other beef hamburger. Subway's roster of made-to-order sandwiches here features subs like the Paneer Tikka (spicy cottage cheese), the Seekh Kebab (lamb) and the Chicken Tikka (spiced chicken).
Like American fast food in the 1950's, the Indian industry is fragmented, with a few sizable national chains, hundreds of small regional players and thousands of mom-and-pop operations. The part of the industry that is measurable by market research consultants — the big players — is growing by 40 percent a year and is expected to reach $1.27 billion in sales by 2005, according to KSA Technopak, the Indian unit of Kurt Salmon Associates, an American retail consulting firm.
The arithmetic is cheering for the fast food companies. "With the number of working households growing, and income levels increasing, a fast food revolution is around the corner," said Manpreet Gulri, the owner of the first Indian Subway franchise, in New Delhi. All Subway outlets in the country are owned by franchisees.
McDonald's was one of the first foreign chains into the country, opening a store in 1996 in the Victoria Terminus, an immense 1880's railway terminal in Bombay. At first, the store had lines up to a mile long, with hundreds of people elbowing each other to order a burger and fries. Additional outlets did well, too. But the crowds evaporated two years later when right-wing Hindu groups attacked one McDonald's store over accusations that, while there was no beef in its burgers, beef tallow had been used in cooking. McDonald's responded with signs outside all its Indian outlets saying "No beef or beef products sold here," but the public relations injury has taken a while to heal.
McDonald's has made itself extra-sensitive in the Indian market since then, and the results are beginning to show. Its mayonnaise is made without eggs. All stores maintain two separate burger-cooking lines, one vegetarian and one not. Workers in the vegetarian section wear green aprons, and workers from the nonvegetarian section are forbidden to cross over without showering first.
McDonald's has created a whole new vegetarian repertory for India: Pizza McPuff; McAloo Tikki (a spiced-potato burger); Paneer Salsa McWrap; and even a Crispy Chinese burger, capitalizing on the great popularity of Chinese food in India.
Some of the new recipes developed in McDonald's Indian kitchens are even being used abroad. "We are exporting our Indian product lines like McWrap and McPuff to Europe and the United States," said Amit Jatia, chief executive of one of McDonald's two joint ventures here. Mr. Jatia, whose company owns and operated outlets in western India, including Bombay, is himself a committed vegetarian, as are many Indian Hindus, though their religion does not forbid consumption of all meats.
McDonald's, based in Oak Brook, Ill., is planning to expand rapidly in Bombay and other Indian cities, adding 32 stores in 2003 to its existing 48. While that is not much by the company's global standards — it has more than 31,000 restaurants around the world — India is one of its most promising new markets.
Subway, which recently replaced McDonald's as the chain with the most outlets in the United States, came to India only in 2001, but it is already challenging McDonald's for dominance. The company, based in Wilton, Conn., expects India to be its largest and fastest-growing market outside North America.
"For Subway, the sky is the limit in India," said Mr. Gulri, the New Delhi franchisee, who is a graduate of the London School of Economics.
The company has six outlets open in Delhi and two in Bombay, including the Lokhandwala store favored by the Narayanans, and franchise agreements for 23 more; it hopes for 200 stores in India by 2007.
One important difference between the American and Indian fast food markets is demographic. Even though the chains' prices here are much lower than in developed countries, American fast food, or for that matter almost any restaurant meal, is a luxury that only an affluent minority of India's one billion people can afford.
"In Jakarta, the frequency of eating out is three or four times a month, compared with Bombay, where it is once a month," said Mr. Jatia, who earned a master's degree in business in the United States.
Even so, the American fast food chains have managed to open a difficult marketing door. Western food companies have often been stymied by Indians' preference for spicy fare; Kellogg's, for example, has struggled to make corn flakes appeal to middle-class Indians who were brought up eating parathas (Indian bread with spicy filling) or masala dosas (crepes with spicy accompaniments) for breakfast. But Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Domino's Pizza have followed McDonald's and Subway here, and are working to standardize quality and spice up their menus to suit Indian tastes.
Both McDonald's and Subway are betting that at least at the top of the disposable-income pyramid, India is moving their way. "The tastes of the urban, upwardly mobile Indian is evolving," said Sapna Nayak, food analyst at Rabobank India, "and more Indians are looking to eat out and experiment."
With affluent families turning to a meal out as an alternative to in-home socializing, Ms. Nayak said that even a small niche in such a big country can be very attractive. "The potential Indian customer base for a McDonald's or a Subway is larger than the size of entire developed countries," she said.
Because the target market here includes many of India's most sophisticated consumers, the healthy-eating marketing war that Subway and McDonald's have waged in the West has appeared here, too. Subway says it is winning the argument: "The gap between us and our competitors in the Western informal eating-out segment is vast," said Rajan Nanda, who owns the Subway store in Lokhandwala.
For its part, McDonald's says that Indians are voting for the Golden Arches with their feet. More than two million people are served in its 16 outlets in Bombay every month, the company says. "Most new shopping malls clamor to have us," Mr. Jatia said.
Much of McDonald's effort has been devoted to building a local supply chain to support its stores here, including measures to keep produce fresh given India's tropical heat and sometimes-iffy electric power supply. Some 95 percent of its ingredients are now bought locally. With new stores to come in high-traffic locations like train stations and highway rest areas, McDonald's hopes its Indian operations will reach breakeven in 2004.
"There is excitement and optimism in the Indian fast food market," said Dipankar Halder, associate director of KSA Technopak. "Indians' adoption rate to new products and services, whether cellphones or burgers, is phenomenal."
That is an attractive feature in a market that may have as many as 100 million potential fast-food customers, according to some studies. "As the saying goes, if you are not manufacturing in China or selling in India, you are as good as finished," Mr. Halder said.
The evidence is everywhere in cities like Bombay, where fashionable young adults throng the malls, and the fast food outlets offer a bit of variety, luxury and fun for adventurous Indians like the Narayanans.
Separate vegetarian kitchen in McDonalds!
All non-veg cooks in McDonalds forbidden to enter veg kitchen without showering!
A paradise for vegs.
Full article:
------------------------------------
Tastes of India in U.S. Wrappers
By SARITHA RAI
OMBAY — In Lokhandwala, a prosperous Bombay suburb, Ashok Narayanan and his wife, Rathi, like to step out in the evening for a "slice of America."
Their first stop is the brightly lighted McDonald's, where their two children — Karan, 9, and Kavya, 7 — jostle with other youngsters at the counters as uniformed employees serve up burgers and fries from an open kitchen.
Then, with their sated kids in tow, Ashok, a commodity broker, and Rathi, a feng-shui practitioner, walk around the corner to a Subway outlet and order salads and footlong sandwiches for themselves.
American fast food chains are all but reinventing themselves for India, hoping to escape being tarred as unhealthy and uncool, as they have been elsewhere. Fast food is growing rapidly in and around India's major cities, and the two best-known American chains here, McDonald's and Subway, are bidding to dominate the Indian market by tailoring their menus to local tastes. Their offerings here, liberally flavored with Indian spices, bear little resemblance to the American originals, and their networks are poised for rapid expansion in India despite the war in Iraq and the slump in the global economy.
The battle is particularly interesting in and around Bombay, India's financial capital and its largest fast food market, where competing outlets are often a few feet apart.
Here McDonald's, the world's biggest purveyor of beef, does not sell its iconic Big Mac or any other beef hamburger. Subway's roster of made-to-order sandwiches here features subs like the Paneer Tikka (spicy cottage cheese), the Seekh Kebab (lamb) and the Chicken Tikka (spiced chicken).
Like American fast food in the 1950's, the Indian industry is fragmented, with a few sizable national chains, hundreds of small regional players and thousands of mom-and-pop operations. The part of the industry that is measurable by market research consultants — the big players — is growing by 40 percent a year and is expected to reach $1.27 billion in sales by 2005, according to KSA Technopak, the Indian unit of Kurt Salmon Associates, an American retail consulting firm.
The arithmetic is cheering for the fast food companies. "With the number of working households growing, and income levels increasing, a fast food revolution is around the corner," said Manpreet Gulri, the owner of the first Indian Subway franchise, in New Delhi. All Subway outlets in the country are owned by franchisees.
McDonald's was one of the first foreign chains into the country, opening a store in 1996 in the Victoria Terminus, an immense 1880's railway terminal in Bombay. At first, the store had lines up to a mile long, with hundreds of people elbowing each other to order a burger and fries. Additional outlets did well, too. But the crowds evaporated two years later when right-wing Hindu groups attacked one McDonald's store over accusations that, while there was no beef in its burgers, beef tallow had been used in cooking. McDonald's responded with signs outside all its Indian outlets saying "No beef or beef products sold here," but the public relations injury has taken a while to heal.
McDonald's has made itself extra-sensitive in the Indian market since then, and the results are beginning to show. Its mayonnaise is made without eggs. All stores maintain two separate burger-cooking lines, one vegetarian and one not. Workers in the vegetarian section wear green aprons, and workers from the nonvegetarian section are forbidden to cross over without showering first.
McDonald's has created a whole new vegetarian repertory for India: Pizza McPuff; McAloo Tikki (a spiced-potato burger); Paneer Salsa McWrap; and even a Crispy Chinese burger, capitalizing on the great popularity of Chinese food in India.
Some of the new recipes developed in McDonald's Indian kitchens are even being used abroad. "We are exporting our Indian product lines like McWrap and McPuff to Europe and the United States," said Amit Jatia, chief executive of one of McDonald's two joint ventures here. Mr. Jatia, whose company owns and operated outlets in western India, including Bombay, is himself a committed vegetarian, as are many Indian Hindus, though their religion does not forbid consumption of all meats.
McDonald's, based in Oak Brook, Ill., is planning to expand rapidly in Bombay and other Indian cities, adding 32 stores in 2003 to its existing 48. While that is not much by the company's global standards — it has more than 31,000 restaurants around the world — India is one of its most promising new markets.
Subway, which recently replaced McDonald's as the chain with the most outlets in the United States, came to India only in 2001, but it is already challenging McDonald's for dominance. The company, based in Wilton, Conn., expects India to be its largest and fastest-growing market outside North America.
"For Subway, the sky is the limit in India," said Mr. Gulri, the New Delhi franchisee, who is a graduate of the London School of Economics.
The company has six outlets open in Delhi and two in Bombay, including the Lokhandwala store favored by the Narayanans, and franchise agreements for 23 more; it hopes for 200 stores in India by 2007.
One important difference between the American and Indian fast food markets is demographic. Even though the chains' prices here are much lower than in developed countries, American fast food, or for that matter almost any restaurant meal, is a luxury that only an affluent minority of India's one billion people can afford.
"In Jakarta, the frequency of eating out is three or four times a month, compared with Bombay, where it is once a month," said Mr. Jatia, who earned a master's degree in business in the United States.
Even so, the American fast food chains have managed to open a difficult marketing door. Western food companies have often been stymied by Indians' preference for spicy fare; Kellogg's, for example, has struggled to make corn flakes appeal to middle-class Indians who were brought up eating parathas (Indian bread with spicy filling) or masala dosas (crepes with spicy accompaniments) for breakfast. But Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Domino's Pizza have followed McDonald's and Subway here, and are working to standardize quality and spice up their menus to suit Indian tastes.
Both McDonald's and Subway are betting that at least at the top of the disposable-income pyramid, India is moving their way. "The tastes of the urban, upwardly mobile Indian is evolving," said Sapna Nayak, food analyst at Rabobank India, "and more Indians are looking to eat out and experiment."
With affluent families turning to a meal out as an alternative to in-home socializing, Ms. Nayak said that even a small niche in such a big country can be very attractive. "The potential Indian customer base for a McDonald's or a Subway is larger than the size of entire developed countries," she said.
Because the target market here includes many of India's most sophisticated consumers, the healthy-eating marketing war that Subway and McDonald's have waged in the West has appeared here, too. Subway says it is winning the argument: "The gap between us and our competitors in the Western informal eating-out segment is vast," said Rajan Nanda, who owns the Subway store in Lokhandwala.
For its part, McDonald's says that Indians are voting for the Golden Arches with their feet. More than two million people are served in its 16 outlets in Bombay every month, the company says. "Most new shopping malls clamor to have us," Mr. Jatia said.
Much of McDonald's effort has been devoted to building a local supply chain to support its stores here, including measures to keep produce fresh given India's tropical heat and sometimes-iffy electric power supply. Some 95 percent of its ingredients are now bought locally. With new stores to come in high-traffic locations like train stations and highway rest areas, McDonald's hopes its Indian operations will reach breakeven in 2004.
"There is excitement and optimism in the Indian fast food market," said Dipankar Halder, associate director of KSA Technopak. "Indians' adoption rate to new products and services, whether cellphones or burgers, is phenomenal."
That is an attractive feature in a market that may have as many as 100 million potential fast-food customers, according to some studies. "As the saying goes, if you are not manufacturing in China or selling in India, you are as good as finished," Mr. Halder said.
The evidence is everywhere in cities like Bombay, where fashionable young adults throng the malls, and the fast food outlets offer a bit of variety, luxury and fun for adventurous Indians like the Narayanans.