Professionally an interior designer and a graffiti artist, Shine Kashyap had been directly related to the hospitality business since her childhood. The two strongest pillars of her life are her father and husband. Shine, since childhood had been exposed to the FnB space as her father has been running a catering business for more than 50 years now. Even after her marriage, the influence of the food business did not end as her husband is the owner of The Crude House Cafe. All these factors pushed her towards the restaurant industry and brought out the restaurateur in her that led to the beginning of Aife Cafe in Satya Niketan.
In Conversation With Shine Kashyap Of Aife Cafe
In an exclusive interview with The Restaurant Times, Shine Kashyap talks about the importance of location, marketing, the importance of healthy food and also her future plans.
Importance Of Location
According to Kashyap, visibility and accessibility are the two fundamental elements to be considered while choosing an appropriate location for a brand. Choosing a place with high footfall could help the brand have an upper hand in the market. A happening place would grant appropriate consumers. Not everyone belongs everywhere. Similarly, not every place is for restaurants.
A restaurant should be visible. People will only reach a restaurant if it is visible and accessible to them. According to Kashyap, setting up a restaurant at a high footfall place or college campus is always great. ‘Aife cafe is located in Satya Niketan, that is a food hub and we have made sure to make the cafe accessible for our patrons by ensuring parking facilities and enormous visibility,’ says Kashyap.
Marketing Dynamics
Social media marketing has now become a necessity. Offline marketing promotions are very important. ‘Aife Cafe targets the young crowd and so our marketing strategy mainly for the next six months is sponsorship for different colleges that will increase our reach amongst students who are also our target customer. Networking always pays off. As a local business, a restaurant must network with other local businesses in the vicinity,’ says Kashyap.
According to Kashyap, the more affinity is grown with the neighboring businesses, the more a brand will receive its direction, which automatically will increase the referral traffic of a restaurant brand. Secondly, restaurants are often contacted to partner or provide catering services to weddings, corporate events, and conferences. One should always grab such opportunities as networking is the ultimate advertisement.
Staff Hiring
According to Kashyap, an overlooked aspect of many new restaurant owners is the hiring and managing of staff. There are many positions to hire for when opening a new restaurant. Some positions require proper restaurant experience, while others are perfect for freshers. Depending on all this the human resource structure has to be decided. The waiters have to be trained in a manner where they know the art of understanding how to read customers, offering conversation when needed and minding their own business when it’s not.
Regular pieces of training and briefings for the staff is very important, in fact, the briefing should be done every single day. ‘Hiring the right people, and then making your expectations clear right from the beginning, always helps the restaurant staff to work together as a team.
A restaurant is as good as the staff who are working for it. The employees are the best brand advocates if hired and trained well.
Food Presentation
According to Kashyap, the way food is presented makes a huge difference. Clicking pictures has become a hit trend, this in itself is a marketing strategy. Building good-looking food is no less than art. Arranging food carefully on the plate, safeguarding no spills and equalizing the visual appeal takes time and effort but it is absolutely worth it.
‘Caring for the appearance shows that you have complete pride in what you have cooked and that you have taken the effort to attract the patrons. So, quality and taste should be the elementary focus for restaurants when crafting and plating the dishes. And while the presentation is essential, it should not be at the expense of the taste’, says Kashyap.
Maintaining Healthy Selection Of Choices
Eating a healthy diet is not always simple and easy as it may seem like, because humans are very complex beings. In the back of their minds, humans eat to fuel their bodies, but they actually make the maximum number of our food choices based on the taste satisfaction factor.
According to Kashyap, there are words that can be used to accurately describe healthy food items on the menu that will give a healthier approach. For instance, if your dishes are grilled, then the appropriate description should be mentioned. Not only will that entice the diet conscious patrons towards the dishes but it will allow you to be more specific about the healthier and palate-pleasing elements of the dishes.
Kashyap concludes by saying that Aife Cafe in just a span of four months has received immense love which has boosted all our passion. A cafe similar to Aife cafe will be seen soon this year, and another brand with around 60-covers will be seen by the end of 2019.
