Bareilly, a city in Uttar Pradesh, is known for its rich traditional gastronomical culture and bright high prospects for restaurants and hotel industry. So, when the Director of Karca Enterprises and B.Tech. in Electronics Mr. Rajat Agarwal proposed the establishment of fast-food café franchise in Bareilly, he instantly knew that Mr. Rajiv Singh’s Cookfinder was the right place for him. Cookfinder plays a major role of experienced service consultant in the food and restaurant industry. It is an all-inclusive restaurant consultant in Mumbai, currently working with top brands; Bollywood celebrities, namely John Abraham and Kangana Ranaut; and national and international restaurant associations.

Hello, Café Ho! is a unique and innovatively conceptualized café that proffers delicious and nutritious food with wide variety to choose from. The layout of the cafe was designed as per the area of 600 sq. ft., which required an investment of Rs. 15 lacs. The profit margin was well above 45%. Rajiv’s mission was to help the café serve fresh and healthy food, while customers could simultaneously sit back, analyze, and choose the best smart phone from the wide selection available. Rajiv understands the significance of establishing business networks in this industry to maintain local and industrial connections and attract more customers. In light of the same, Mr. Agarwal handed over his networking aspects to Rajiv and his team of experts at Cookfinder. With his experienced workforce, wide database, and reliable resources, Rajiv committed to providing the best guidance and end-to-end support to Mr. Agarwal. The services Rajiv offered included the following:

1. Location

Considering the new venture of Mr. Agarwal into restaurant business, Rajiv knew that managing a restaurant with high profit margin requires a prime location. Finding a pivotal spot in targeted clientele locality in busy bustling Bareilly was indeed really challenging. Nevertheless, Rajiv’s experts hunted out a perfect location based on their wide database and Mr. Agarwal’s requirements. Rajiv’s professionals selected a location that offered great visibility, proper area margin, accessibility, and parking space for customers.

2. Restaurant theme and conceptualization

Theme and conceptualization of a restaurant were considered as the first and foremost aspects. It included laying out restaurant format and the type of service and cuisine that Mr. Agarwal wished to offer. Depending on the restaurant concept, Rajiv’s team of interior designers and architects visited the location to sketch out a blueprint. While designing the restaurant, several factors were considered, such as cuisine, target clientele, available area, and budget. The team then proposed optimized suitable restaurant design driven by generating high traction and even higher ROIs.

3. Kitchen design

With well-planned strategies, Rajiv’s crew designed the layout of commercial kitchen. The layout optimally utilized the place and appropriately allocated equipment for smooth workflow and better capacity management. Based on the restaurant theme, Rajiv’s architects, interior designers, and kitchen experts designed and efficiently managed a suitable kitchen.

4. Menu designing & pricing

Cookfinder helped create a unique profitable menu by analyzing customer expectations, food trends, contribution–distribution brim, and cost/profit margin. Rajiv’s specialists launched attractive campaigns by analyzing the gross cost of recipes. Food cost was evaluated as the ratio of restaurant’s cost of ingredients (i.e., food inventory) and the revenue the ingredients generate when items listed on menu make a sale (i.e., food sales). Rajiv’s team of experienced chefs standardized the entire menu designed and created exclusively for Hello, Café Ho! This ensured a unique blend of quality, consistency, and taste, ensuring the restaurant’s signature mark.

5. Food licensing and legal-aid

Cookfinder’s legal team completed all the necessary legal work and documentation, including permits and licenses. Of note, Rajiv helped procure liquor/alcohol license for Hello, Café Ho! from the excise department. Other licenses, including Food Safety and Standards Authority of India license, health/trade license, eating house license, fire safety license, certificate of environmental clearance, and VAT/GST registration, were also procured hassle-freely by Rajiv’s team.

6. Manpower & training

Rajiv knows that hiring and retaining suitable staff is challenging in the food & restaurant industry. His recruitment and placements department hired the best talent for Mr. Agarwal, including kitchen staff, including executive chefs, pastry chefs, line cooks, and support staff; service staff, including waiters, bartenders, mixologists, jugglers, housekeeping staff, and delivery personnel; and management staff, including manager, chef, cashier, and store manager. Prior to allowing the employees to get on with their duties, they were ensured to be fully trained by Cookfinder’s certified coaches and training experts for offering supreme client service and dinging experience. Since the last 3 years, Rajiv has been continuously providing Hello, Café Ho! the required manpower and training them. The employees undergo trainings on a timely basis for learning about the trends, new techniques, and demands in the restaurant industry.

7. Procurement and inventory control

For serving customers recipes defined with elite taste, and quality, Rajiv’s team ensured the procurement of fresh local produce and quality raw material at affordable market rate. With help of his reliable vendors and suppliers, Rajiv arranged for prompt procurement of essential kitchen material and food ingredients. Trade identification number was ensured for vendors prior to signing any contract. Moreover, Rajiv’s solid service allows effective inventory control. An online track of inventory was kept by establishing a computerized management system. Additionally, a scheduled quality–quantity inspection is arranged for procured materials for checking for quality and consistency of the produce.

8. System automation

Backed with current advanced technology, Rajiv’s technical team installed high-end point-of-sale software updated with novel features. The technology helps better streamline, organize, manage, and track all operations. It additionally ensures the automation of billing process, stock & inventory control, detailed reporting of sales and expenditure, and standardization of recipes.

9. Marketing support

According to Rajiv, marketing and branding Hello, Café ho! has even today been one of the crucial factors for brand awareness and publicity. Considering the fierce competition among restaurants, Rajiv’s team offered solid marketing plan for more ensuring more customer traction and ROIs. Social media handles, including Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, were utilized optimally and a technologic base was created for the brand. Several loyalty programs, including partnering with online food applications, geo-targeted advertising, sending out e-mail and newsletters, and online picture magazines, were arranged. Moreover, cross–parallel marketing and 3-month soft handholding were also provided by Rajiv to Mr. Agarwal.

10. Launch ready

One of the USPs of Cookfinder is promoting the launch of restaurant. It was necessary to start marketing from before the launch day to get people excited about the café’s launch. In line with this, several marketing options were offered as follows:

• Designing flyers, pamphlets, and launch cards that promote the place and its grand opening day

• Creating social media presence and advertising

• Giving away free coffee samples for customers’ delight

• A mail campaign including sending coupons to local residents

• Special offers and discounts on the launch day

Benefits of working with Cookfinder as specified by Mr. Agarwal:

1. Low investment: economic, distinct, and flexible fast food café franchise model that ensures constant income in low investment.

2. Lower risk, high ROIs: assurance of high ROI due to brand recognition and marketing.

3. Latest technology: installing right technology, such as mechanical cash registers and visa and Mastercard services, to ensure higher growth.

4. Franchise support: providing remarkable end-to-end franchise support, training, and consultation services for entrepreneurs to buy a fast-food café franchise.

Today, due to Rajiv’s and his team’s extensive efforts and end-to-end support provided to Mr. Agarwal, Hello, Café Ho! has been generating more profit margin that first estimated. Happy and satisfied with Rajiv’s consultation services and professional industry-based guidance, Mr. Agarwal has given a new project to Cookfinder. This is a pub called BarDot that soon would be launched in the same premises of Hello, Café Ho!

Mr. Kunal Kumthekar is a well-known founder & managing director of Cipher–Plexus Capital Advisors and a founder & designated partner of Kpin Real Estate Ventures Llp. Being in the world of real estate, building resorts and housing projects has never been a strange concept to Mr. Kumthekar. One of his latest projects include Kpin Kenisha Holiday Homes Cluster E J K. It is a ready-to-move residential project of holiday homes and resorts located at Pawasalawadi in Durshet areas of Raigad, Maharashtra.

When Mr. Kumthekar decided to undertake Kenisha Holiday Homes project, except for the aspects associated with real estate and construction, he was completely unaware of how to set up or run a resort and restaurant, how to hire and handle the manpower, etc. Considering this, Mr. Kumthekar decided to partner with Tripvillas, one of Asia's largest holiday home rental companies. Shortly after building the resort, Mr. Kumthekar was determined to launch it as soon as possible. However, he was soon faced with the big questions as to how to procure experienced reliable manpower, how to set up a perfect restaurant for the resort, and how to manage the entire resort. This is when Mr. Kumthekar’s secretary Mr. Pankaj looked up Cookfinder online to seek out detailed consultation. The call was put through, and the first official meeting between Mr. Kumthekar and Mr. Rajiv Singh was set.

Within 1 month after meeting with Mr. Kumthekar, Rajiv helped set up the entire resort, including opening up a restaurant; setting up the entire kitchen; providing staff, such as chefs, cooks, room/service boys, receptionists, and managers; and setting up standard practices and guidelines to run and manage the entire resort. How did Rajiv do it within just a month? Let’s take a look.

After the meeting, without any further ado, Rajiv took over and consulted Mr. Kumthekar regarding several aspects required to set up restaurant and run a resort. These aspects included:

• Set up of an organizational structure

• Restaurant interior designing and kitchen setup

• Procurement of necessary machinery and raw material

• Recruitment and timely training of required manpower, such as chefs, cooks, and management staff

• Financial planning and budgeting services, including staff salary and resort pricing strategy for clients and customers

• Leveraging resort’s unique benefits

• Menu designing and standardization

• Marketing and branding

• Promoting the resort

1. Restaurant theme and concept building

Opening up a restaurant was based on the concept of the resort. It included laying out a restaurant format, type of service to be provided, and uniquely crafted cuisine. Depending on the resort concept, Rajiv’s team of interior designers and architects visited the resort to make a blueprint. While designing the restaurant, various factors were considered, including cuisine served, target clientele, total area available, and budget. Rajiv’s team proposed optimized unique suitable restaurant design for generating high traction and even higher ROIs.

2. Kitchen design

Rajiv’s experts built a productive commercial kitchen. With well-planned strategies, kitchen layout was designed for optimally utilizing the place, including allocation of equipment for smooth workflow and effective capacity management.

3. Menu & pricing

Rajiv helped create unique profitable menus by evaluating location, customer expectations, food trend, % sale contribution, and cost/profit margins. Rajiv’s experts launched engaging campaigns by understanding the gross recipe costing. Percentage food cost was considered for understanding how to and how much a dish served should be charged for. Rajiv’s team compared spent cost and charged cost for every recipe.

4. Standardization of menu

At Cookfinder, Rajiv and his team of experts are well aware that standardizing recipes and automizing processes ensure customer satisfaction and retention through consistent taste and quality food. A standardized recipe is well crafted and carefully adapted to guarantee that the same taste, quality, and consistency is served on every independent order for customer satisfaction and retention. Additionally, standardizing recipes has more benefits that only ensuring consistency.

Knowing the quantities of each recipe beforehand helps minimize food wastage and related inventory shortages for commercial kitchen. Considering the control and management of food cost, when same ingredients and quantities are used each time for preparation, the food cost remains unchanged. Considering efficient purchasing, the quantity of ingredients for production is conveniently calculated based on each recipe. Food inventory also remains well under control. Standardization also allows labor cost control, employee confidence, and less need of manual record keeping, which effectively reduces human error.

5. Manpower and training

Rajiv knows that hiring and retaining the right talent is challenging. His team of recruitment and placement experts, recruited the best restaurant staff for Mr. Kumthekar, including kitchen staff (executive chefs, pastry chefs, line cooks, and support staff), service staff (waiters, housekeeping staff, and delivery personnel), and management staff (managers, cashier, and store manager). Before getting employees on board with Mr. Kumthekar, they were well-trained by certified coaches and training professionals of Cookfinder to deliver excellent customer service and customer satisfaction. Even today, the employees at Kenisha Holiday Homes undergo scheduled timely training for updating them with novel techniques, trends, and demands currently going in the restaurant industry.

6. Procurement and inventory control

For serving customers unique recipes of high-class taste and quality, Rajiv’s team helped Mr. Kumthekar to procure the freshest of produce and best quality ingredients at reasonable rates. Through his wide established base of vendors and suppliers, Rajiv helps Mr. Kumthekar procure essential material and ingredients for his kitchen. Rajiv also helped with the trade identification number of vendors before signing a contract. Cookfinder’s prolonged contract service has reportedly proven beneficial. Additionally, Rajiv’s strong service ensured inventory control for the kitchen and restaurant. By setting up a computerized management system, Rajiv helped Mr. Kumthekar keep online track of inventory. Moreover, quality–quantity check of the procured material is arranged on a timely basis to ensure consistency of procure.

7. System automation

Backed with brand new technology, Rajiv provided Mr. Kumthekar the best point-of-sale software integrated with latest features. The technology has assisted Mr. Kumthekar streamline, organize, manage, and track all operations running in different parts of the resort, easing the workflow. Rajiv’s point-of-sale has also automized the billing process, stock & inventory control, detailed reporting of sales and expenditure, and standardization of recipes.

8. Apart from restaurant

While setting up these services, Rajiv focused on maintaining high standards for and in all the amenities provided for the guests by Kenisha Holiday Homes. He helped provide appropriate staff for arranging, operating, and managing the amenities, including swimming pool, baby pool, lounge, library, food services, well-equipped gymnasium with steam, club house, wellness center, spa, multipurpose hall, indoor games, water bodies with landscape and sit outs, tents, manned & electronic security services, garbage disposal system, store with essentials items, and night stay facilities for drivers. Rajiv also helped set up digital influence and standard practices, including software, for interoperability, digital inventory set up, unlimited point of sale and marketing, digital distribution of monthly/seasonal packages, and smooth check-in and check-out services. The services and standard procedures set up for resort management have been provided by Rajiv with an aim of imbibing in each guest a sense that they are the top priority.

9. Marketing support

Marketing and advertising of Kenisha Holiday Homes has been crucial for brand awareness and publicity. Rajiv’s team established a technological base for Mr. Kumthekar’s holiday homes project through active utilization of social media platforms. Several loyalty programs, including geo-targeted advertising, e-mail–newsletters content marketing, and online picture magazines, have been made available by Rajiv for taking the brand to even wider clientele database. Additionally, cross & parallel marketing and 3-month soft handholding have been some unique features provided by Rajiv to Mr. Kumthekar for achieving higher profit margin.

10. Ready to launch

Apart from his unique consultation services, Rajiv also helped Mr. Kumthekar with promoting the launch of the restaurant and resort. This included sending out launch cards and pamphlets across social media and to local businesses, corporates, and institutions by mails. To publicize the launch and attracting more customers, special offers and discounts were availed. To encourage guest visits, Rajiv also brainstormed several offering strategies, including bounce-back offers (wherein a coupon weas offered to customers to be redeemed later), well-decorated place, free appetizers & drinks, and customer interaction on the launch inevitably generated great interest in the community.

Due to Rajiv’s extensive efforts, end-to-end assistance, and thorough help, it was finally possible for Mr. Kumthekar to launch the resort in less than 1 month. It has become extremely smooth and easy for Mr. Kumthekar to personally look after the entire business model, which has led to tremendously maximizing their profits.

Kenisha Holiday Homes

Kenisha Holiday Homes project is located in the scenic landscape of Khopoli, 2 hr away from Mumbai and Pune. This area is an emerging hot real estate market. Kenisha Holiday Homes offers a lifestyle experience through its modern blend of villas, cottages, and outdoor landscaped areas built for witnessing the beautiful mountain vistas and resting and relaxing in absolute solitude, gentle sweetness, and aromas of nature. If you truly want to indulge in a real country life away from chaotic cities, Kenisha luxury villas are perfect for you!

Mr. Rajiv Singh, CEO & Founder of Cookfinder

After pursuing his Bachelors of Computer Application in animation, Rajiv now possesses 12+ years of experience in restaurant & food industry and public relations. This born epic foodie aims to streamline the cooking industry with his novel ideas and concepts for enhancement of the industry. Having worked with over 4000+ restaurants, Rajiv currently works as a restaurant service consultant setting up cloud kitchen, take-away services, fine-dine restaurants, pubs, and bars.

Rajiv is a proud owner of a gastronomical pub in Mumbai and Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, where cuisine is prepared with taste, innovation, and creativity. He is a key member of AAHAR, an international food and hospitality flagship fair conducted with a goal of improvising regular restaurant & food standards pan India.

Lake City Dry Fruits Pvt Ltd is a dry fruits-oriented brand owned by Mr. Himanshu Jain and located in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. Established in 1980, Lake City Dry Fruits is a leading wholesaler, importer, trader, and supplier of variety of dry fruits, such as almonds, groundnuts, figs, pistachio, raisins, walnuts, and cashew nuts. Used extensively in the food processing industry, these nuts and dried fruits are in tremendous demand both in national and international markets. Lake City Dry Fruits has two domains, namely 20 20 Dry Fruits and Pocket Vyapar. 20 20 Dry Fruits is a registered brand that brings fresh quality dry fruits that are carefully selected, processed, and packaged for high-class convenience, health, and taste.

However, despite the growing success today, initially, designing flavors and defining recipes for variety of dry fruits and processing as much as 200 kg of dry fruits daily in one go were certainly tricky for the team of 20 20 Dry Fruits. Finding the right team of experienced chefs and cooks who would design the perfect blend of recipes for the variety of dry fruits available was indeed challenging. It was then that the team of 20 20 Dry Fruits searched online for experienced chefs and came across Mr. Rajiv Singh’s well known Cookfinder.

If you look up 20 20 Dry Fruits online, you will find out several flavors of cashew nuts, almonds, kishmish (raisins), makhana, mixed nuts, etc., listed on the website. Here, the classic dry fruits are available in multiple flavors, such as butter-salt cashew, tandoori cashew, tangy masala mix cashew, classic almonds, salted almonds, black pepper almonds, chocolate raisins, and variety of unique flavors of dry fruits. All of these flavors and recipes have been developed, designed, and curated by the food experts and experienced chefs at Cookfinder. The recipes have been developed with the aim of providing quality edibles ensuring that not a single day of any of the customers would be without a healthy handful of 20 20 dry fruits.

To develop all the recipes, Rajiv’s team of professionals, including experienced chefs, set out from Mumbai to Jodhpur and soon implemented the following steps for successful recipe planning:

1. Designing the concept of recipe

The primary aspect considered by Rajiv’s team was developing flavor profiles to deliver high-quality unique blend of taste and consistent quality. The concept of all the recipes revolved around simplicity and uniqueness for maximum customer satisfaction and health development and retention.

2. Core ingredients and raw material

For Rajiv’s team, developing a whole new recipe at an industrial level was indeed entitled to substantial trial and error. To work through this issue, Rajiv’s team mainly considered target market and developed flavors and recipes accordingly. Rajiv’s experienced chefs put together a list of core ingredients based on the menu concept to complement each type of dry fruit. The chefs also considered optimal repurposing of raw materials and ingredients for reducing food cost and any wastage.

3. Investigating supply chain

Rajiv understands that to reduce any risk and food cost, it is crucial to have limited third parties in the supply chain. While planning the recipes, Rajiv’s professionals listed out and finalized a fixed number of suppliers, which were selected based on their company history, storage facilities, delivery logistic supply chain management, and working environment.

4. Costing out required items

With the help of a recipe management program, Rajiv’s team put the available data into a spreadsheet allowing them to analyze the concept of recipes, desired proportions and portions, and individual items or core ingredients. Additionally, the team also took into consideration the following crucial points: 1) Pricing of each subtype of dry fruit packet considering the menu concept, core ingredients, and suppliers’ cost, 2) Maximizing the profits, and 3) Goal for average revenue per sale

5. Designing and creating the actual recipes and making of seasoning

The focus of recipe designing and creation was mainly on seasoning. Rajiv’s team of experts and professional chefs knew that nutritious rich-in-protein dry fruits need just the right touch of perfect complimentary seasoning or crushed flavorful wholesome ingredients that deeply hype up the healthy goodness. Rajiv’s experienced chefs designed two types of seasoning for 20 20 Dry Fruits.

One type of seasoning was created with an idea of coating the processed dry fruits at the end of process before packaging. The second type of seasoning was created with an idea of adding seasoning into the main batter or dough before layering or coating the dry fruits into the batter itself before baking or frying into oils that are wholesome, high-in-MUFA (mono unsaturated fatty acids), and good for health and heart.

Rajiv’s skilled and experienced chefs designed the recipes for making various seasonings for all types of dry fruits. The designed recipes were sent to the finalized vendors who prepared the seasonings as per expert requirements and demand. After receiving the fully prepared seasoning back from the vendors, the seasoning was used according to the recipes.

To Cookfinder, 20 20 Dry Fruits was a special project as this meant a challenging opportunity to create recipes to be produced on an industrial level for quantities in mass volume, for instance, the various recipes for cashew were on created on an industrial scale to achieve the daily cashew production and processing of 50,000–60,000 kg.

6. Test runs

To understand if the designed recipes would meet and exceed customers’ expectations, Rajiv’s team gave each dry fruit recipe twists and tweaks to finalize on the best outcome. The team also put forth a genuine honest feedback for improvisation. Rajiv’s team focused on keeping the recipes easy yet unique to stand out 2020 Dru Fruits from its competitors and proffering reasonable pricing.

After finalizing each recipe, Rajiv’s team systematically wrote down each and every recipe step by step along with necessary ingredients, machinery, time frames, and prep. The focus while creating and finalizing recipes was such that the more comprehensive each recipe for each dry fruit the easier and convenient for the brand and its team at work to be able to execute it flawlessly each time. Rajiv’s team also included a picture of a final product at the bottom of each recipe in automated systems for all chefs to know the finished product before execution.

7. Training the chefs and production liners of 20 20 Dry Fruits

Creating and finalizing recipes and preparing seasonings for various dry fruits were not the only tasks Rajiv’s team planned to achieve. Their chefs, production liners, and other employees associated with preparation at 2020 Dry Fruits were trained appropriately. Because Rajiv understands that if line cooks and workers are unaware of the recipe or essential quantities of seasoning, then crucial aspects may be left out, inaccurate information could be shared, or employees could come under tremendous responsibility too soon. This would ultimately lead to inconsistency or compromised quality of recipe, unfortunately resulting in unsatisfied customers and discouraged employees. Rajiv’s team then focused on proper documentation and a regimen planning for employees to follow; so, the recipes and final products will not be hampered and satisfied customers will be retained. Rajiv’s team organized step-by-step training module. Employees were trained to be more competent and confident with appropriate training. This surely helped them understand their responsibilities and expectations which enhanced their morale and generated added benefits of less employee turnover for the brand.

8. Standardization of recipes and automation of production processes

At Cookfinder, Rajiv and his team of experts are well aware that standardizing recipes and automizing processes ensure customer satisfaction and retention through consistent taste and quality food. A standardized recipe is well crafted and carefully adapted recipe tested to guarantee that during every independent production line and batch making, the recipe will produce products consistent in quality and taste. Additionally, standardizing recipes has more benefits than just ensuring consistency.

Knowing the quantities that each recipe produces helps reduce food wastage and related inventory shortages for factories. Standardization also ensures accurate nutrient content with each serve or bite. In terms of controlling and managing the food cost, when same ingredients and quantities are used each time for preparation, the food cost remains unchanged. Considering efficient purchasing, the quantity of ingredients for production is conveniently calculated based on the recipe. In case of a standardized recipe, food inventory is well under control and the quantity of ingredients needed during each production can be easily estimated. Standardization also allows labor cost control, employee confidence, and less need of manual record keeping, which effectively reduces human error.

By implementing appropriate policies, procedures, operations and recipe manuals, and timely training modules, Rajiv’s team has assured that the production team of 2020 Dry Fruits will achieve more positive customer feedback, affirmative staff feedback, less employee turnover, high profit, and overall successful venue.