Amritsar is known throughout the country for its delicious food. If we talk about sweets and Vegetarian food, Desi Ghee is a key constituent of Amritsari Dishes. Many people have tried to Franchise this category of Amritsari food, and almost all of them have failed. My first client in this category was in the year 2004. He opened a Amritsari Restaurant cum Sweet Shop in a premium locality in a leading city. Desi Ghee Preparation was his Punch-line in all his advertising campaigns. After a year of high pitch advertising, he couldn’t establish himself in the market. I conducted a Market Research for him, and found flaws in his key Punch Line. Chanakya says that no rule is an absolute truth in itself, and it’s the duty of the King to adapt rules as per the requirement of the masses.
There were many other Businesses in the same category running successfully. They could offer quality products at a lesser price as Desi Ghee was not a key ingredient in their preparations. My submission to my client was to keep using Amritsari food as a Punch-line in his campaign, but slowly and steadily get rid of the Desi Ghee Tag. He may offer a few speciality dishes containing Desi Ghee, but in order to rationalize the prices, he needs to convert to normal Ghee. For instance, Chana Bhatura he was offering was almost 1.5 times the price of other key competitors. This is a hot selling dish of Restaurants in such segment. Similarly his sweets were overpriced. Findings of my research indicated that Desi Ghee dishes had only a few takers in that locality, and customers were not willing to pay extra for the same.
My client dismissed my findings, and continued with the same Desi Ghee Punch-line. He ran his Business for one more year, and had to close after suffering heavy losses. Many more clients in food Business have approached me since 2004, and I always quote this case study to them. Learning from this case study is that you need to adapt your product as per the liking of the masses if you are running a Business which requires a Mass Target Segment.
My immediate motivation of sharing this article today is that I saw another Amritsari Dhaba in my locality, opened only this week, positioning his Business on the same Desi Ghee Punch-Line. I wish I had written this article a bit earlier, and the owner of this Desi Ghee Dhaba had read this article before investing his money.
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