His revenue model thrives on two USPs- suspension and fusion. And riding on these two, he has grown from a single outlet restaurateur to chef-owner of three fine dining restaurants in Kolkata and is on his way to spread wings beyond Bengal. Pradip Joseph Rozario, who was adjudged the best Young Chef in the Country by the Federation of Hotel and Restaurants Associations of India (FHRAI) couple of years ago, now owns three restaurants: Kurry Klub, KK’s Fusion and Mio Amore. He is also working on to put up a fusion food restaurant at Colaba in Mumbai with a local joint venture partner. The three restaurants are run by Doyel Foods. The three restaurants together (with 255 covers) notched up close to Rs 20 lakh sales turnover last year. The target is to turn it into a Re One crore company over the next 3 years.

“And that’s not a tall order. Until, let’s say five years ago, the Restaurant scenario in Kolkata was nothing to write home about. But now the number of people dining out is growing phenomenally and with that the number of fine dining restaurants has also been growing fast. Now most of the leading national and international restaurant brands have opened shops in Kolkata. The market is expanding simultaneously. Even a couple of years ago, our sales revenue were around Rs 7 lakh. From there we have reached where we are today,” said Rozario,

He explained, “My business model has been simple—offer something new and unique to the taste-bud of your customer, keep the menu changing, conceive and create new menus. These make customers keep coming to my place again and again. There is this suspense factor—they do not know what they will be offered, the next time they visit my restaurant” said Rozario.

Pushpen Patro, Operations Manager, Doyel Foods, who has been there with Rozario from the day one, said, “Initially we were in two minds about how would people accept this novel experiment. But people are just lapping it up. The footfall at our restaurants has recently been growing rapidly. We get guests from different airlines, foreigners, tourists and business travelers from different parts of the city. We get large number of repeat customers…that’s a huge advantage.”

“The food & beverage or restaurant business is getting increasingly crowded these days. I am not talking about the deep pocket businessmen, but for entrepreneurs like me, the success mantra should be to stand out. That’s exactly what I have been doing,” said Rozario.