Kahini Chakraborty – Mumbai
Founding promoter and business leader of one of India’s largest F&B retail companies, Sunil Kapur has decided to consolidate all the brand businesses, of namely Global Kitchens, Grand Cuisines, Copper Chimney and Travel Food Services, under one single entity called K Hospitality Corp. The official roll-out of the brand transition will be effective January 2015. Speaking exclusively to Food & Hospitality World on the company’s re-branding exercise and brand expansions, Varun Kapur, executive director, K Hospitality Corp said, “Our business divisions are divided into: hospitality and food services and travel retail. We wanted to function under one platform and communicate with all our extended stakeholders. Within the group there is a lot of cross utilisation of expertise and the idea is to have synergies more effectively across the group. Moreover, the rationale for the brand consolidation is to centralise key functions, provide clear strategies for growth and expansion aligned to group strategy, improved governance and more efficient management of operations of each vertical. K Hospitality Corp aims to be one of the largest Indian hospitality and food service groups in India catering to an extensive spectrum of F&B related services, across both landside and travel retail business areas/ verticals.”
Elaborating on the company’s restaurant business expansion, Kapur informed that the brands – Irish House, Copper Chimney and Bombay Brasserie have been successful in the market. The company opened three outlets of Bombay Brasserie in Coimbatore, Kolkata and Chennai, and after seeing the success of the brand in a short span of time, the company is soon going to open its fourth outlet and second one in Chennai in the next four-five months. The company is also scouting for locations in Mumbai for the brand’s expansion. Besides this, the company is also going to launch Irish House cafes in Delhi, Bengaluru and other metro cities, and therafter in tier II cities. It is also looking at strengthening its presence in airport F&B, at its current locations-Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai, Muscat and Salalah International Airport. The company recently forayed into lounge management business and opened CIP lounge operations at Terminal 2 of the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai. TFS is managing the lounges in partnership with Performa, a gategroup company highly regarded worldwide for designing, managing and servicing airport lounges. The company’s banqueting and catering business is also undergoing rapid expansion.