Hemmalini Maiya is spearheading the expansion of the landmark MTR restaurant.
When your family owns a well known landmark in the city, the most sought-after eating place for more than eight decades, you tend to put it on autopilot and cruise along; you don’t have to go on an overdrive to woo customers. But Hemamalini Maiya, the grand-daughter of MTR founder, Sadananda Maiya, is not one of them. She likes to experiment, to innovate, take charge and, as she puts it, wants MTR to be relevant in the future.
In a fast-changing scenario where restaurants are dime a dozen, it is a challenge to be in tune with the next generation. Especially for a very traditional restaurant, the conundrum is how to expand without alienating the diehard loyalists.
“MTR has been around since 1924 and not much has changed. Ever since we from the third generation in the family started running the restaurant, over a period of time we came to feel that we needed to make MTR accessible to a larger customer base and take the experience to many more people who have heard about MTR but have not been able to be part of it for various reasons. So we decided to expand and opened four restaurants a year ago,” says Maiya.
If one is used to the traditional MTR experience — sitting on the granite-topped tables with men serving you delicious dosas dressed in traditional dhotis and wolfing down the ghee-laden dosas with excellent coffee in silver glasses — the new format will come as a surprise. There are high stools around for those who want to have a quick bite, staid wooden furniture and boys dressed in black and orange uniforms serving food. Branded “MTR 1924” with bright orange as the colour theme, the four new restaurants are located in the businesses hubs of Gandhi Nagar, J P Nagar, St Marks Road and Whitefield.
“We didn’t know how it would work out….It was an experiment and so far it has been working well,” Maiyya notes. Not without a few problems though. There are old-timers who swear by the original MTR near Lalbagh Gardens, claiming that the expansion was not required and that the branches do not reflect the tradition MTR stands for. But setting aside the negatives, many customers are coming forward to give inputs to the family to help them finetune the format of the four new restaurants.
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With Bangalore attracting people from all over the globe, many of whom have heard of MTR, the new formats are a way of reaching out to them, says Maiya. “A new customer wants a taste of what we have to offer; they are happy if they get good and tasty food. Die-hard loyalists, even though they are near our branches, still prefer to come all the way to the main MTR. So to a large extent, the expansion experiment is working and we have not alienated our old-timers,” Maiya claims.
As with all expansion attempts, Maiya had to resolve the practical problems such as getting cooks, ensuring the supply chain was in place and maintaining the quality. “It is a day-to-day issue when you are running a restaurant and need to deliver quality across various points. It is a big challenge which we have overcome to a large extent and have come close to standardising,” says Maiyya.
It shows. MTR restaurants have already become much sought-after during lunch time in the business districts.
So what’s next on the expansion menu?
“We are taking it slow. We will expand but not at the pace of last year when we set up the four new outlets almost at the same time. We are looking at new formats where there is less need for human hands. It will be more of a fast-food format where instead of around 35 staff required in an ordinary restaurant, we can make do with 10. We are studying models and we will start in Mumbai or Delhi,” Maiya says.
That’s good news for MTR fans in these cities.