The fast food frontier

While Devyani may have struck a deal with Bhatta and the union members, the company soon found itself embroiled in yet another row with locals which proved far more damaging to its goodwill in Nepal. In the wee hours of 15 December 2012, two container trucks with Indian number plates carrying tons of frozen chicken from India were stopped by a group of over two dozen poultry farmers at Dharke, a small bazaar on the busy highway that connects Kathmandu with the Tarai plains. They had been tipped off about the shipment, and seized the opportunity to protest the use of imported chicken over local produce. “We stopped the vehicle and demanded to know what was inside … we asked for a letter of consignment and it clearly said that the chicken was for Devyani International,” said Kismat Adhikari, one of the farmers who waylaid the trucks, which were carrying a total of 5104 kg of frozen chicken. The Nepal Hatchery Industry Association, an organisation which counts thousands of poultry farmers in Dhading and Chitwan districts as its members, gave its full backing to the barricade. Soon, the police arrived at the scene and there was a minor clash when they tried to control the crowd of irate farmers.

By the time the 40 or so policemen were deployed, over 1000 farmers and villagers had gathered in front of the offending vehicle. The state-run Veterinary Department found that Devyani Interational had violated quarantine regulations, and insisted that the stock be buried. In an unprecedented move, the government also suspended four quarantine officials for allowing the transfer of raw chicken from India. Although the company had violated the law that banned import of chicken from India – which had at the time discovered strains of the bird flu virus in some of its livestock – the farmers were angrier about KFC’s claims that it was importing chicken from Brazil, whereas in reality the chicken was coming from India. After all, if KFC could import chicken from India, then why not buy it from farmers in Nepal? I asked Devyani’s Kathmandu office for comment, and was referred to their New Delhi headquarters. As was the case with all media inquiries, Devyani refused to comment on the incident for this article.

I asked Samir Thapa, the former manager of Wimpy’s who now runs a successful hotel management training institute, why Devyani was having such a hard time in Nepal. He revealed that international chains considering their options inside Nepal have approached him for advice, but that none of them seem to have learned from Wimpy’s failure. “Unless you have a customised menu which is suitable for the Nepali palate, you won’t succeed,” he told me. “We have our own staple food and it’s only occasionally that we dine in a fast food joint. So, the idea is to introduce foods that, apart from the chain’s regular items, would be a huge draw to the local population.”

Indeed, many such international chains have made efforts towards local customisation for their global client base. McDonald’s in particular has been a pioneer: the now-defunct McFalafel burgers in Israel, mozzarella sticks in Italy and, as of 2012, its first ever vegetarian outlet in Amritsar. National chains are getting in on the act too. Jollibee, a Filipino fast food chain, shrewdly added a rice menu to its burger-bar fare, and as a result provided stiff domestic competition for McDonald’s. KFC has also adapted its menu to the Indian market, with specialty vegetarian items and ‘Rizo Rice’, which includes a portion of fried rice and a bowl of chicken curry. Perhaps assuming regional similarity, the chain brought these same adaptations to Nepal. But Thapa told me that such paltry modifications do not go far enough. Echoing the demands of the Dhading farmers, he also suggested that these companies should promote local products instead of falling back on oft-given excuses of an unfavourable business environment. “Political instability is [also] an ongoing problem. It is a factor, but not the most important one. We should not forget that international hotel chains like Hyatt, Le Meridian and Radisson opened here during the war,” he added.

Elsewhere in Southasia, international chains cause controversy from time to time, but do enjoy a better record overall. In Sri Lanka, chains such as KFC, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Domino’s and Barista Coffee have opened their doors. McDonald’s arrived in Sri Lanka in 1998 during the country’s civil war. McDonald’s and Pizza Hut’s multiple outlets (the latter has opened a staggering 24), have both ventured outside Colombo. Like in Nepal, local chains in Sri Lanka have a broader customer base, but there the multinationals have been particularly successful in luring in lower middle-class customers. They have tailored their menus to local tastes, this time by making foods spicier and desserts sweeter. Burma has recently been in the news for lifting its economic sanctions, but despite the seemingly imminent arrival of McDonald’s and KFC, the giants have not stepped in yet. Mary Brown, a Malaysian fast food chain, has been braver, announcing early this year that it will open 20 restaurants in Burma in the next five years.

The importance of local knowledge

If international chains have faced stumbling blocks in Nepal, the local brands, by contrast, have come on in leaps and bounds. A case in point is Bajeko Sekuwa, which has six outlets in Kathmandu, employs more than 200 workers and makes average daily sales of NPR two lakh (USD 2280). Their success is especially remarkable considering that all of Kathmandu’s restaurateurs have a ready list of grievances: the country’s recently instituted zero-tolerance policy on drink-driving, which has hurt alcohol sales and the evening rush; the rolling power outages; threats of extortion, and more. But Chetan Bhandari, the gregarious 36-year-old owner of Bajeko Sekuwa, would rather work on his company’s planned expansion than fret about the problems. “I want to expand to all the districts of Nepal and even abroad.”

Bajeko Sekuwa’s journey began at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA), although the owner wasn’t flying anywhere. In 1985, Dina Nath Bhandari, a 42-year-old man from the eastern hill district of Khotang, was visiting TIA’s domestic terminal. Outside, he came across a scene that inspired him to launch his business. Airport officials, visitors and airlines staff were queuing up for afternoon snacks, avoiding the airport canteen because it was too expensive. It dawned on him that he could start a similar business in the open space just outside the airport premises. An itinerant worker, he had travelled to India’s Northeast where, working as a labourer-cum-contractor, he had met people from other parts of the country. Everyone would take turns to cook, and Bhandari soon found himself making fish curry and mutton barbeque for his co-workers. Back in eastern Nepal, he would volunteer to roast the mouth-watering sekuwa (mutton barbecue) to this select group of connoisseurs, who would in turn reward him with a kilo of raw mutton, ready for the next day.

Bhandari invested NPR 1000 (USD 11.5) to buy four stools and a dozen bicycle spokes to use – with typical Southasian ingenuity – as skewers. On the opening day, he prepared four kilos of his marinated mutton, but could sell only one. The following day he prepared less and added beaten rice and homemade pickle to the menu. Soon, word spread about a middle-aged Brahmin man clad in the traditional daura-suruwal and topi, selling mutton sekuwa. The customers themselves named his stall ‘Bajeko Sekuwa’ – Baje’s Barbecue, after the colloquial baje for a grandfatherly man – giving him the sobriquet that would become one of Kathmandu’s most popular brand names a decade later. Within a week, he was able to sell more than eight kilos of sekuwa in a day; his client base was expanding far beyond the airport’s staff and travelers. Bhandari continued his roadside business for five years, but the police started to complain about the trash. Undeterred, he moved to a nearby space in front of the Customs Office, but again attracted unwanted attention from the authorities. In the early 1990s, following another relocation, Chetan, Bhandari’s only son, began to show an interest in his father’s business.

Chetan grew up in the comparatively cosmopolitan Kathmandu, and soon began to feel awkward about his father’s roadside business, which embarrassed him at his boarding school. Bajeko Sekuwa’s modernisation began after he persuaded his father to lease an open space by the road and build a hut. Soon, the place had six tables and twelve stools, all the while retaining its brand name and clientele. In 1997, Chetan enrolled in an MBA programme at Tribhuvan University, and was toying with the idea of upgrading the eatery. The turning point came when his father left for eastern Nepal, leaving Bhandari junior to oversee the business. Until then, Chetan wasn’t sure about what to do with his life; he was considering enlisting with the police or the army, or even going abroad for further studies.

Chetan had already recognised the brand’s value. He narrated to me how an incident led him to rethink his career, as well as the future of the eatery. One day, a regular diner ordered a plate of fried goat’s brain. Chetan’s father used to separate the goat brain from the head and put it aside for later preparation while boiling the whole head soon after an animal had been slaughtered. In his absence, however, such details were being ignored. One of Chetan’s staffers informed him that they couldn’t prepare the order since all the brain had melted when they had neglected to separate the brain while boiling the goat’s head earlier that day. “We used to sell fried brain for 30 rupees a plate. I realised that we were losing at least 100 rupees daily and it made me sad,” Chetan told me. A month earlier, he had briefly worked as an accountant at the Godavari Village Resort on the outskirts of Kathmandu, where he received a monthly salary of NPR 1500 (USD 17). It dawned on him that he could earn much more by looking after the family business properly.

Chetan found that there were huge discrepancies between what was served and how much money was collected. “The waiters served four plates of sekuwa, but only reported the sale of two, pocketing the difference,” he recalled. “I began to see where we were losing money and implemented a strict accounting system.” He told them to place the raw sekuwa on a table near his counter, and to send it for roasting only after receiving an order. “If some day I write a book on the evolution of Bajeko Sekuwa, I will make sure this is included.”

Around the same time, he started to visit other restaurants in Kathmandu and consulting their owners. He hadn’t visited any Western countries, but learnt about fast food chains like McDonald’s through the Internet. “I decided that Bajeko Sekuwa would be my future. My efforts at upgrading it began to bear fruit. The sales soon spiked,” he told me. As he began to oversee the kitchen, service and accounts himself, the trajectory of the little-known eatery took a sharp turn upwards.

On a closer look, the Bajeko Sekuwa story is one of a struggle between a savvy and ambitious teenage son and a father who clung steadfastly to his old and often unprofitable ways. Chetan’s reforms were a minor departure for Bajeko, but his next move was radical, and almost led to the company’s rupture. In 2000, Bhandari went against his father’s wishes, renting an expensive building in order to expand the business. His father was worried they would lose the business and be left unable to pay the exorbitant rent. “I was pampered by my parents,” Chetan said. “Unlike my peers, I didn’t have to bother about pocket money. But they wanted me to study and become a professional in a bank or a finance company. The last thing they wanted was for me to join the family business.”

Daily sales soon reached NPR 35,000 (USD 399). What astonished Chetan was that the old outlet, which he retained in order to point old customers to the new one, was not doing bad even as businessmen thronged the new venue. Both outlets ran for five years. Today, Bajeko Sekuwa boasts a banquet hall near a luxury hotel and several restaurant outlets in Kathmandu, and has plans to open 20 more branches across the country. Chetan is now in charge, while his father has parted ways to run a separate outlet with his new wife in his native eastern Nepal. “My father remarried after our mother’s death ten years ago. I told him that some people might have ulterior motives, and it was good to divide the property,” Chetan told me. His father agreed, and Chetan now owns the restaurants and brand name in Kathmandu outright.

I asked him what he thought was the secret of Bajeko Sekuwa’s success. “Early on, we made sure that we created a loyal clientele. Its popularity had spread through word-of-mouth and every customer was a salesman for us.” Although hundreds of Kathmandu eateries rely on word-of-mouth publicity, Bajeko Sekuwa in particular has mastered this art. It doesn’t even have a website. It has never advertised in newspapers, on television or the radio. Bhandari told me they have developed a unique way of marketing their new outlet by directing their customers to the new location. “We used to post notices about new outlets a month ahead of the opening. But now we do so only a week before the launch. If we did it earlier, the enquiries at the new place would be difficult to handle,” he said.

Coffeehouse culture

Himalayan Java’s founder Gagan Pradhan had a hard time convincing his compatriots that coffee was a drink to savour. When he opened the first outlet in 1999, he was attempting something entirely new: introducing an exotic drink (coffee) and culture (café) in a tea-drinking nation. “We don’t sip coffee. We don’t have a culture where we sip cappuccino, latte or espresso. The market was dominated by instant coffee,” the 37-year-old Pradhan told me when we met in one of his outlets in Kathmandu. “Back then, coffee was considered a luxury drink. People even thought that because coffee has caffeine, it may not be good for health.”

But Pradhan wasn’t easily deterred by difficulties. Armed with a hotel management degree from Australia and three months of coffee shop training in the US, he knew that success would come, albeit after some time. The tourist hub of Thamel was an obvious choice for his first outlet, because he knew a Nepali clientele alone would not be enough to sustain his business. Indeed, back then, more than 70 percent of his clients were either tourists or expats. A few Nepalis, unaccustomed to coffee culture, were disappointed; some even refused to pay. “When the locals thought about coffee, they thought about Nescafe; they were used to having something sweet. But our coffee was different; it was intense, very strong, and very bitter. And, they didn’t like it,” he recalled.

Pradhan’s foray into the coffee business also coincided with a period when many Nepalis travelled to the West for study and work. For those who had developed a caffeine or coffee-shop dependency while abroad, Himalayan Java offered a welcome respite, and again word-of-mouth became a valuable source of growth. “Those who lived abroad for five or ten years know the business and beverages,” Pradhan said. “When they come to our coffee shop, they bring their friends. And over cups of coffee, they will explain a few things. And that’s how everything got multiplied. If I tried to convince them about the significance of coffee, they may not believe me. But when a friend or a brother explains about coffee culture, it’s likely to be more convincing.”

But no one comes to a café just to sip coffee. Himalayan Java is often filled to capacity with customers both foreign and Nepali deep in conversation, either in their own cocoons or mingling, as if sipping coffee was the last thing that they had come to do. In the semi-darkness, everyone is engrossed in something: one young man checks his Facebook while another scans a copy of the Nepali Times. A group of giggling girls in their high heels arrive, only to be turned down by a polite waiter because there is no table available for the four.

An army of creative and influential people slowly began to patronise Java after its launch. Among them was Abhi Subedi, a well-known Nepali litterateur and professor, who afforded the coffee shop some publicity through his newspaper columns. Coffeehouses like Java also featured in Narayan Wagle’s best-selling Nepali novel Palpasa Café. In a 2004 column in India’s Outlook magazine, Daniel Lak, a former BBC correspondent in Nepal, called it “Asia’s greatest cafe.” Subedi said he was happy to find a place that had the ambiance of the cafes he had frequented as a student in Britain. “I was always looking for a coffee place in Kathmandu. I was very influenced by the coffeehouse culture of Britain even before I went there as a student towards the end of the seventies,” Subedi told me when we met at Himalayan Java. He told me that creating a space where youths could come and spend time socialising, thinking and debating was an act of courage and imagination. “It was entirely dedicated to the youth. People like us were a minority, almost rarity in those days. I stuck on because I had found a coffeehouse, and started by a son-like young man,” he said.

The locals were used to sweetened Nescafe. But our coffee was different; it was intense, very strong, and very bitter. And, they didn’t like it

Ushering in an exotic drink like coffee was no easier in other parts of Southasia. “Be it India or Sri Lanka, in this part of the world, tea came first,” Pradhan said. But tea also has a disadvantage: it doesn’t come in as many varieties as coffee, which Pradhan describes as a “social beverage”. Three years prior to the launch of Himalayan Java, a young Bangalorian businessman named V G Siddhartha opened Café Coffee Day in his hometown. Popularly known by the acronym CCD, India’s largest coffee chain has now expanded to more than a thousand branches across the country. “Although some of our competitors use Italian products, there is an increasing emphasis on the use of local products and CCD has promoted homegrown coffee,” Pradhan said. “The use of local products provides an edge to any company in a developing country, because people encourage it out of nationalistic feeling, which is strong in Southasia. It will also help promote local farmers.”

Tejendra Nath Shrestha, president of the Restaurant and Bar Association in Nepal, said that changes in lifestyle in urban areas and exposure to the outside world has led to a strong influence of Western culture. “Although our culture is strong, if you walk Kathmandu’s streets, you see young people in Western outfits. And that outlook has influenced their food habits as well.” He echoed Thapa when he said that Nepal’s economy wasn’t strong enough to sustain international chains, but argued that they should be free to fire their employees if they don’t follow the company’s policies. “If you hire someone and he or she isn’t doing the job well, you have the right to fire.” He added that the multinational chains thrived by virtue of profits made by a few outlets that draw huge crowds. “But in Nepal’s case, where you see only a couple of outlets, that is not the case,” he said.

Pradhan attributes the success of his coffee chain – which now includes a dozen franchises, including ones in Washington DC and Toronto – to passion and patience. “For me it’s the passion for the business, the art. If you don’t enjoy what you do, don’t get involved. I believe in that,” he told me. “I have seen a lot of people who invest and expect a quick return. You have to have patience for at least three to five years. That’s the strategy I adopted back then. I knew it was a tough business, but the reason I was sticking around was there were hardly any other coffee shops in town. I thought that if I can only tap one percent of the tourists who come to Kathmandu, it does justify my business.”

Attracting tourists might have been Pradhan’s initial concern, but before long, he began to target the Kathmandu’s upper-classes. But there was a problem: Thamel, his district of choice, had gained some degree of notoriety as a seedy place, dotted with dance bars and massage parlours. Subedi shared an anecdote with me which illustrated the mindset of Pradhan’s customers. At a conference, a female participant told him she had placated sensitive family members opposed to her frequenting Himalayan Java by mentioning him as a regular customer. “I was surprised and delighted to hear that. I guess it has changed some perceptions,” Subedi told me, clearly flattered.

Although Pradhan is aware of the obstacles in running and expanding his chains – “We require three products to run a coffee shop: water, electricity and good-quality milk; and all three are at a premium here” – he has expanded his operation to other areas, including coffee merchandising and barista training. Himalayan Java now buys coffee from farmers in several districts of central Nepal. The green beans are roasted, and afforded a shelf life no longer than 14 days. They also supply coffee to movie theatres, hotels, restaurants and embassies in Kathmandu. “We don’t have enough coffee to export, that’s why we are focusing on the local market,” he said. Those Nepali customers who grimaced at the bitterness of Pradhan’s product might well be smiling now, with cups of coffee in their hands.

By Deepak Adhikari

The writer is a Kathmandu-based journalist with Agence France-Presse. His work has appeared in Nepal’s leading publications including Nepal Weekly magazine, Kantipur and the Kathmandu Post. He has also written for TIME magazine and the Caravan.

This article was Originally published in April 2013 on the print quarterly ‘Farms, Feasts, Famines’.