BAKERY

Enterprise
ENTER THE BAKERY
Ankit Gupta

The story of Nini’s Kitchen started as a small 42 seat outlet in Prahladnagar back in 2014. My wife
Navneet Gill was a full-time dentist when I decided to leave his family’s textile business to start
a restaurant. We thought that the struggle would be limited to arranging finances for the set-up
and everything would fall into place after the opening. We were young and naïve and our only
knowledge of the hospitality industry was derived from western feel-good movies and television
shows.

After the inauguration, which we thought to be our happiest day, we opened our doors for dinner.
Since we already called friends and family for the opening in the morning, there wasn’t a single
person apart from us and the staff in the evening. So we waited the whole evening for someone
to drop in. In the middle of the first month, there was a day, when the total sale was INR 150!
Some staff members quit after a month because they thought we would not be able to give them
their salary. Two kitchen members stayed and so did one waiter and three housekeeping people.
With just six staff members, I became the kitchen supervisor and the juice-tender and my wife
would drop by in the evening to take orders and to take care of the service. A woman walked in
once on a Saturday, saw an empty restaurant and said ‘Saturday ko itnakhali, to bura hi hoga’. So
we started sitting on the table near the main door, when there wasn’t anyone inside, to make it
look like there were “guests” inside. Sometimes people would walk-in, to borrow a dining chair
because our neighbouring restaurant didn’t have enough waiting chairs – they had 20.

We would open the restaurant at 10AM and shutter down at midnight. Some of the family
members were against the idea of my branching into another business and so could not be turned
to for support. We had to either fight or die fighting! With no budget for newspaper articles or
hoardings, we had to rely on customers to give us publicity. So we made sure that every person
who walked in had a good experience and we had to aim to get mind-blowing reviews to bring in
more customers. Finances were really tight.
The electricity was cut because we were late in paying a bill, and this was on a Sunday when it
really hurt. We used to distribute pamphlets door-to-door at all the corporate offices around
Prahladnagar. Some shooed us away, some took the pamphlet. Whatever time we had we used it
for showering, eating and sleeping. But we believed in our product and would brainstorm all the
time about how to make it attractive to guests. We started taking customer feedbacks seriously
and slowly started expanding our menu. Navneet started working on staff-training, since only
freshers wanted to work for an unknown brand, and they had no idea about service.

The hard work and attention to detail began to show results. We started reaching break-even by
the sixth month. Just when things had started looking up, there came Diwali and everyone from
the staff ran away. That Diwali taught us how to tackle staff for the festive seasons thereafter. It
took us one whole year to be able to consistently reach break-even every month.

Branching out

In 2017, we opened a bigger branch near IIM in 2017. Today, we have restaurants at Science City Road,
Panjarapol, Prahladnagar and Chandkheda in Ahmedabad, and a restaurant in Anand.
The first time we won the Times Food Award in 2017, we were sitting in a corner, not knowing
anyone, except the SandwichworkZ couple who always friendly, with our palms sweating from
nervousness. We still remember how we both stood up for a glimpse of Rushad Ginwala when
he walked in. He was the Dronacharya to our Eklavya! To be sitting in the same room with such
legends, was a dream! It was the best day of our lives, since we opened Nini’s in 2014. We have
won the Times Food Award five times.

The restaurant has grown to become known for its shawarmas, soft base pizza, pastas, Italian hot
chocolate, paneer nawabi and cheesecakes, with a reputation for consistency.

Baked by Nini’s

Having a considerable chunk of our menu using breads for sandwiches, wraps, sides, etc, it was but
logical that we made our own breads, which we did. However, they were not for sale to our guests.
When the lockdown hit everyone unexpectedly and there was panic buying, some of our guests
requested that we supply them with our bread. Their feedback was very encouraging and they
continued to buy bread from us. We take our customer feedback very seriously and when they nudged
us to do this commercially, we took the plunge and started Baked by Nini’s.
Since we are a pure veg restaurant and cater to a lot of jain customers, we decided to follow this with
our bakery as well to be true to our clientele. However, the biggest challenge was offering gourmet
cheesecakes and bakes without egg and without gelatin. It took many trials and errors to finally come up
with the perfect vegetarian recipe. Today we are known and loved for our cheesecakes even by those
who’re not vegetarians themselves. Our biggest achievement is the look of surprise on their faces when
they taste the deliciousness of our cheesecakes made without eggs or gelatin.

Today, Baked by Nini’s is spread across the city with outlets at Satellite, Bodakdev, Chandkheda, South
Bopal, Maninagar, Panjrapol and Science City.

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