Cafes the new breakfast mantra

Cafes the new breakfast mantra
Swati Anand & Anshul Dhamija | TNN

Bangalore: Crisp toast, scrambled eggs and fruits rounded off with some strong coffee — if this is how you like your breakfast, chances are that you might consider starting your day at your neighbourhood cafe.
Cafe players and fast food chains are increasingly looking at tapping into the sunrise hours to strengthen their market. “A lot of young professionals, particularly those who live alone in metros, like to have a breakfast with colleagues or friends or even alone in a nice ambience. Our pricing — in the Rs 100-150 bracket — doesn’t pinch, given the rise in disposable incomes,” says Rini Dutta, VP (marketing), Barista.
There’s a wide gap not just in ambience, but also in menu offerings between the lavish buffet spreads at five-star hotels and the crowded local darshinis and roadside stalls. Only a few local players like Flurry’s in Kolkata and Infinitea in Bangalore have filled this gap so far, creating a huge potential for cafes that fit the bill for relaxed ambience and mid-priced varieties on a wider breakfast menu.
“Our Rs 99 breakfast package — consisting of pancakes or toast and eggs with cereal, juice and of course, coffee — is a huge hit in Chennai and we often see corporates hold meetings at our cafes in the mornings. We plan to extend this offering to Bangalore soon, since our other format The Donut Baker too has seen good response in the mornings,” says Kaushik Roy, CEO of Global Franchise Architects, which runs Coffee World.
While breakfast is largely considered an eat-at-home meal, cafes are confident that with the number of people eating out having grown exponentially over the past five years, breakfasts too will soon catch up. To offer breakfasts on the menu, it’s essential for the cafe to have a kitchen. This can be a stumbling block, since not all cafes have one.
“Cafe Coffee Day’s highway cafes on Bangalore-Mysore road have reasonably priced breakfasts that do very well. We are planning to introduce it in our newer outlets that serve plated meals like the one in Whitefield,” says a company official.
It’s also important to constantly innovate on the menu. At Mocha, there are a variety of omelettes from Spanish and Italian to Indian masala that are said to be a sell-out in the morning with corporates and students alike. But while Riyaaz Amlani, CEO of Impressario, that runs Mocha, likes experimenting especially around festive seasons, he doesn’t localise too much. “We offer burji pav and the Parsi favourite Sali Par Edu, but largely stick to waffles, pancakes and crepes. We don’t want to take on an MTR by offering idlis and dosas,” he says.
McDonald’s Salad Sandwich has quite a few takers in the mornings. “Earlier, even though we’d open at 11, customers would start trickling in only at 12.30. Today, they’re in ten minutes after our doors open and opt for salads, croissants and breads. We’re soon going to start opening earlier,” says Akbar Khwaja, MD of United Pizza Restaurant, which runs US Pizza.