If there is one industry that is perfect for a rant, it would be the food industry. And if there is one city that is perfect for a rant, it would be Delhi. As an agency that works with a whole bunch of players in Delhi’s hospitality industry, my team gets to see an interesting side of the business and witness some of the funniest anecdotes and interactions.
The nature of our work gives us access to a side of restaurateurs, bloggers and media that most do not get to see. Of course there is an all prevalent grapevine that travels around as well, and some of the stories that we get to hear are a class apart! I’ve heard of cases where restaurants have been opened just to give sons some credibility and mileage so that it is easier for them to get a ‘rishta’. These places open to a PR blitzkrieg with their photos all over, and soon shut shop within a couple of months once a suitable match has been made.
Then, all too often, you have restaurants that want to engage an agency to become the next trending thing on Delhi’s food circuit, but for the tiny challenge that their monthly budget is the cost of a meal for four at their own restaurant. (Concept, food and vision is another deep sigh altogether.) They’ll complain and haggle about budgets and constraints ad nauseam, a day before they leave on their month long trip around the globe. Annoying is an understatement! Building a brand or communicating a restaurant’s USP to the same audience that is targeted by 100 other restaurants and agencies is tricky AF. But the challenge is when they think agencies have a magic wand to turn things around from zero to culinary hero. If that were true, I would have opened 10 of my own by now. It can be a little overwhelming at first, but you soon learn how to deal with these cases.
The other spectrum of running a PR agency that promotes restaurants and food businesses is our constant interaction with bloggers and food reviewers. Love them or hate them, but bloggers have recently gained a lot of clout as influencers. There are a whole bunch that we really do respect and love working with – these guys know their food and the objectivity needed for reviewing. Unfortunately, a huge segment of food bloggers, though they have a large number of followers on Instagram, wouldn’t know their sushi from their Chicken Manchurian (I exaggerate but you get the point). You meet a bunch of self-proclaimed food critics who feel that being picked up by a cab and pampered at events with freebies is a professionally-induced right. And there is a whole other place in hell for those that see a review as an opportunity to party it out, on the house of course, with friends on a Friday night. Though extremely rare, we also have bloggers that have been too sozzled to walk home straight after we entertain them or even better, asked for doggie bags to take home (guess they really did like the food that much). On the other hand, mainstream media might have their tantrums, but for the most part are professional and respectable about their work which makes things a whole lot easier for us. Though these sometimes hilarious and mostly teeth-grinding cases are few and far between, it does get frustrating because it is these that end up tarnishing the entire community.
I feel the city’s food industry is upping its game and it is my pleasure to work with some of the most professional and enterprising foodpreneurs. I think the need of the hour is to work as one efficient team to bring the best of the food business to the evolving and massively aware customer. It is unfortunate that a notorious 20% can tarnish the industry’s image, but therein lies the solution. The remaining 80% are definitely working better and harder, to place Delhi on the world map as a leading culinary player.
Pandora’s Box: Unlocked by DSSC’ is an anonymous series of 5 F&B industry superstars who disclose what it is about the industry that irks, nay, annoys the #&*$ out of them. You can read the other ones here, here and here.
