The co-owner of MW Eat, Ranjit Mathrani shares with Barkha Goenka the secret ingredients that he implemented in his business to walk the path of success.
1. Never retire:
I think is very important because one is not by oneself in a little ivory tower, but actually a part of all the life of the younger people. And that is actually one of the things which brings me great satisfaction.
Mathrani does not believe in laying down. For him not retiring is an “Alzheimer prevention strategy”. The dedicated businessman is of the opinion that there should be no set age for retirement. “We are all living longer and the retirement age 30 years ago is very different from now. There’s no bar, Picasso was painting away and had children at age of 88-89. He’s different in many ways, he married his fourth at the age of 85 or something. And so, in that sense I think as long as we have the energy to do so, we should be doing so. Age is not a barrier it is actually an approach of mind.”
Instead of spending his time at the golf courses or in resorts, the workaholic believes that his business allows him to stay in touch with the challenges of the younger generation. The average age of the waiters is mid 20s and the HR department directly reports to him. He said: “I am always aware of the challenges facing young people. Be it accommodation, drugs or homelessness, broken relationships, whatever it might be is happening with the young people in London, I am aware of that.
I think is very important because one is not by oneself in a little ivory tower, but actually a part of all the life of the younger people. And that is actually one of the things which brings me great satisfaction as over the years you have a sense of what the young generation want to feel and think about because so many of them work with us.”
2. Rigorous recruitment:
Despite the difficulties in the restaurant sector, the growth for MW Eat continues as the turnover (as of March 25) rose by six percent, as reported by the Evening Standard. Mathrani believes maintaining the culinary integrity and a meticulous recruitment process is the key to success.
“Camellia, who has a great knowledge of food, relentlessly focusses on searching out and identifying talent. Talent, who can actually cook proper food or is willing to cook proper food of India which is not the food in the restaurant as you notice, is food in the palaces, is food in the gourmet homes and is food on the streets. She identifies chefs who have got that passion for detail, culinary skills and they are put to intensive food trials in Bombay and then recruited and selected meticulously.”
Expressing his concerns over Brexit relating to the future of recruitment, Mathrani said: “The government will need to adopt a pragmatic, sensible and flexible immigration policy which recognises business realities,” as reported by the Evening Standard.
3. Thorough training:
The entire staff including the chefs are trained diligently under Mathrani’s supervision. The reason behind it being the target customers. “Since the time Chutney Mary started 90 percent of our customers have been non-Indians. We weren’t targeting the Indians at the first place; we were targeting the cross-section countries.”
The basic formula that Mathrani followed was to encourage the staff to convince regular customers to try new things. He explained: “Whenever I welcome guests to our restaurants, I say I’ll take you on one condition that you will not try or ask for anything that you’ve had before. You are not permitted to have a dish you are familiar with. Otherwise they will say I want a Butter Chicken or Rogan Josh (red meat dish of lamb or goat originated in Kashmir), which are the most popular dishes among the people.
But it was not always easy to do that. “The challenge of course is that the people’s attention span is limited and if you are a waiter for how many seconds will you have a customer’s attention or if you are on a website for how many seconds people read the website? The part of our challenge is actually conveying the sophistication and differences precisely. I think we have succeeded as the people when they come to our restaurants they are at the level where they say yes, they can feel it is better or different,” explained Mathrani.
4. Culinary complexity:
The group believes that sometimes taking an extra step in the food business is necessary to get an edge over the competitors and this group does it by adding complexity to their food.
“Everything we do is more complex. For example, Shakurti from Goa has 26 different spices in it. That all comes down and merges to complexity of flavours and people understand that and give compliments. We are gratified by the level of interest people have in us.”
5. Speciality:
Veeraswamy portrays a royal Indian style, with Mughal-style carpets, colourful turbans, classic paintings from Bengal and the regal chandeliers. The atmosphere is far from the ‘traditional’ Indian restaurant in the UK as it eschews the velveteen curves and evokes more of an imperial Maharaja (king) influence. The owners redid the restaurant in 2007 to suit the modern London environment.
He further explained how the tradition of Indian food with beer started with Veeraswamy. “The King of Sweden used to come every year and in fact the association of Indian food with beer came through him. He donated a cask of Carlsberg to be used by him when he came here in the early 20s and 30s and out of that came the association of Indian food and beer.”
Established on the same day as the Queen was born in April 1926, from the start Veeraswamy had a connect with the royalty. In 2008 for the first time an outside caterer, i.e. chefs of Veeraswamy were invited to cater an event involving the Indian President’s visit to the city. It was again repeated two years ago in 2017.
“Veeraswamy has always attracted people we call the ‘celeb A’. The great film stars like Marlon Brando, Audrey Hepburn, André Previn, Mahatma Gandhi, Maharani (Queen) Jaipur and mostly all the Maharajas (Kings) of India, William Holden, Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton have all visited this place. We have had a whole list of celebrities and this place is very popular with all the middle eastern royalty and even now we have had the great Indian film stars coming, Amitabh Bachchan would have been here, politicians as well from India. So, the tradition of having the wealthy or the well-known has continued,” said Mathrani.
6. Location:
Since its foundation, Veeraswamy has been a part of the British establishment because of its location, the size and scale. Set in Swallow St Arcade, offering great views of Regent Street, it attracted the aristocracy, senior professionals, army officers, civil servants or the people who actually were running the empire like the bankers and industrialists from the early 30s. It instantly became the place which interested the celebrities and royalties.
“The interesting thing about this area, Swallow street is that as a street it is London’s first really restaurant streets. If you went back in the 20s and 30s there would be down at swallow street whole stream of restaurants,” said the co-owner.