Chili’s Planning to Add 50 Restaurants

CHILI'S American Grill and bar plan to open four- five restaurants every year adding 50 Chili’s in South and West Indian markets. BW Hotelier caught up with Ashish Saxena, CEO at TexMex Cuisine which owns and operates the global casual dining chain in the Western and Southern regions of India. “This year, we had set out an ambitious target of opening five new restaurants taking our count from 10 to 15. We have managed to open four so far and are very close to starting fit-outs in our fifth restaurant,” he said.

In past eight years, the brand has grown with 1600 restaurants globally and 23 in India, “The restaurants are also the leading casual dining restaurants in terms of sales in the catchment. The brand’s success is also reflected in the high ratings of our restaurants on restaurant discovery platforms like Zomato” said Saxena.

Saxena feels that Fine dining is becoming obsolete in today’s context, “Casual dining is increasingly providing a great balance of fun, relaxed ambiance coupled with great quality food and innovative drinks,” he said.

Elaborating about his managerial skills Saxena said, “We at TexMex Cuisine, own and operate 14 Chili’s in South and West India. Since all our restaurants are owned we have a completely professional team managing the restaurants, with a central corporate team handling all brand marketing, supply chain, finance and accounts and other support functions”.

According to Saxena the biggest challenges that the brand has faced is finding the appropriate real estate for their restaurants. “Our standards require a minimum size, ease of access and adequate utilities. Outside of the handful of good quality malls like Inorbit and Phoenix, it is very tough to find quality real estate especially in high street markets which has limited our growth to a certain extent,” he said.

He continued that, “Last year has been very challenging for entire F&B industry starting with Demonetisation, service charge advisory, highway liquor ban and most recent GST implementation. Even with such a tough year, we are happy that we have grown in sales and are geared up for the upcoming festive season,” he said.