Anybody growing up in Mumbai is very well conversant with the ubiquitious Udipi restaurants that dot the Mumbai landscape. As a child, I vividly remember landing up at Ferry Wharf (Bhau cha dhakka in the local lingo) , then catching a bus (I think it was BEST Bus No 44) to Crawford Market (which stubbornly refuses to morph into Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Market in the public consciousness) and then have steaming idlis at Sadanand. years later, when I was doing my MMS, I was introduced to the terms like productivity, six sigma et al. And as any self respecting , shallow MBAs are wont to, I bandied these jargon shamelessly.And as time elapsed, and some wisdom sprouted purely by the sheer momentum of that entity called Father Time, I realized I did not have to go far to understand what all that meant. And what is more near than that friendly neighbourhood Udipi restaurant. So let me take you through a quasi-virtual walk through to illustrate my point.
So one lands up in the Ramakrishna Udipi Hotel ( Ramkrishna Udipi is 'Smith' of Udipi Hotels) and a waiter ( we will define waiter in the Udipi context as we go along. Suffice to say, the waiter now is the usher or the poor man's maitre'd) guides you to a seat. Before even you can put your glutatus maximus to anchor itself on the sunmica covered table, 4 glasses of water in steel tumbler materializes itself in front of you. And in a mime signal which would put any top notch baseball signaller to shame, the fan is switched on from the cash counter. You now take a dreg of water (in India we drink water, we dont sip) and even before it has cooled your innards, the waiter (yup, all he needs is a red cape and a modicum of biceps) thrusts the menu card to you. You scan the menu card and settle on the medu vada. He listens though you are made to believe that he hears. He scoots to the kitchen landing and bellows out in a Pavarotti like voice "One medu vada". Before you can say Jack Robinson, he is back with a plate of medu vada and sambar and chutney.You believe nobody is watching you in the milling mass...But you are so wrong. The Force is with the waiter ( he is now a Jedi) and he senses 45 seconds before you are about to polish off the last morsel of the vada. He asks if you want to have tea or coffee. Afraid of antagonizing the man with those supreme powers, you order a cup of tea. The same Jack Robinson/Pavarotti routine is repeated and a cuppa tea is thrust before you.As you gulp the hot tea, he asks whether you need anything else. You, reluctantly decline. He fishes out bill book from his pocket, whips out the pen from behind his right ear lobe, scribbles the bill, plonks it on a small plate and then gives it to you. You pay the bill and you sense a disturbance in the Force which forces you sidle out of your seat and make your way out.
What struck me is how the behaviour pattern is to drive up the key productivity metric, which is , customers per table per hour. I am sure the average bill value would not be high, so sales will have to effected by higher customer turnover and it can only be attained with quick service, clean tables and tasty hygenic food. The Udipi restaurant cracked the quick service mode much before QSR became a buzzword and McDonalds brought the Veg Tikki burger to India. No wonder , the Udipi restaurant still resides cheek by jowl with the McD of India. This is my ode to the Udipi restaurant, the reason for so many memories...
So one lands up in the Ramakrishna Udipi Hotel ( Ramkrishna Udipi is 'Smith' of Udipi Hotels) and a waiter ( we will define waiter in the Udipi context as we go along. Suffice to say, the waiter now is the usher or the poor man's maitre'd) guides you to a seat. Before even you can put your glutatus maximus to anchor itself on the sunmica covered table, 4 glasses of water in steel tumbler materializes itself in front of you. And in a mime signal which would put any top notch baseball signaller to shame, the fan is switched on from the cash counter. You now take a dreg of water (in India we drink water, we dont sip) and even before it has cooled your innards, the waiter (yup, all he needs is a red cape and a modicum of biceps) thrusts the menu card to you. You scan the menu card and settle on the medu vada. He listens though you are made to believe that he hears. He scoots to the kitchen landing and bellows out in a Pavarotti like voice "One medu vada". Before you can say Jack Robinson, he is back with a plate of medu vada and sambar and chutney.You believe nobody is watching you in the milling mass...But you are so wrong. The Force is with the waiter ( he is now a Jedi) and he senses 45 seconds before you are about to polish off the last morsel of the vada. He asks if you want to have tea or coffee. Afraid of antagonizing the man with those supreme powers, you order a cup of tea. The same Jack Robinson/Pavarotti routine is repeated and a cuppa tea is thrust before you.As you gulp the hot tea, he asks whether you need anything else. You, reluctantly decline. He fishes out bill book from his pocket, whips out the pen from behind his right ear lobe, scribbles the bill, plonks it on a small plate and then gives it to you. You pay the bill and you sense a disturbance in the Force which forces you sidle out of your seat and make your way out.
What struck me is how the behaviour pattern is to drive up the key productivity metric, which is , customers per table per hour. I am sure the average bill value would not be high, so sales will have to effected by higher customer turnover and it can only be attained with quick service, clean tables and tasty hygenic food. The Udipi restaurant cracked the quick service mode much before QSR became a buzzword and McDonalds brought the Veg Tikki burger to India. No wonder , the Udipi restaurant still resides cheek by jowl with the McD of India. This is my ode to the Udipi restaurant, the reason for so many memories...
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