Joost Juice Bars bets big on growing health awareness in India

Australian retail chain Boost Juice Bars, which is present in India under the brand Joost Juice Bars, is looking to operate about 100 stores by 2020.

The company introduced the natural juice and smoothies bar concept in India through a master franchise agreement with NatureU Enterprises, which currently operates 14 stores in Delhi-NCR and Mumbai.

Talking about the brand's growth in India, Janine Allis, Founder, Boost Juice Bars Australia, said: “In India, there are challenges due to lack of infrastructure, cold chains and it takes time to build a supply chain. Through the past few years, we have now understood the market. If one looks at the demographics and the potential, I believe India could be one of our fastest growing markets, now that the foundation of the business has been established.”

Allis said factors such as India being primarily a vegetarian market and growing health-consciousness will be catalyst for the company’s growth.

The Indian master franchise expects to be running 30 stores by 2017.

Currently, the company has outlets at airports, hospitals, shopping malls and gyms. It hopes to woo health-conscious consumers with cold-pressed juices, smoothies, low-fat wraps and sandwiches.

The fresh juice segment in the country is largely unorganised and fragmented.

Rivoli Sinha, Founder and MD, Joost Juice Bars, said: “Now that we have established the first few outlets and have a robust supply chain, we believe we will be able to scale up faster. We will expand through roping in sub-franchisees. We have already identified cities such as Hyderabad, Pune, Bengaluru and Ahmedabad for expansion.”

She said while the company would first look at expanding in metros, it would also look at smaller cities.

“For smaller cities, we may have to look at a different model and ensure we price ourselves right. While we operate in a niche segment, we want to ensure we are affordable.”

Overall, Boost Juice Bars have presence in 14 countries and operates about 450 stores.

McDonald’s enters Goa; 240th outlet in west, south India

Westlife Development Ltd, owner of the master franchise of McDonald's restaurants in west & south India through its subsidiary Hardcastle Restaurants Private Ltd (HRPL), officially announces its entry in the state of Goa with the inauguration of its first restaurant. The new outlet marks its entry into the 10th state and opens its 240th restaurant in west & south India.

As per a press release, the new restaurant has found abode in the Mall De Goa, a centrally located mall on national highway 17, Porvorim, and accessible from all routes in the state. The restaurant is spread over 1,090 sq ft, in a food court which will deliver the same quality of food, service and ambiance that the brand is internationally known for. It will offer customers a convenient dining experience in the mall's open food court on level 3, between 10 am and 10 pm every day.

Commenting on the launch, Ranjit Paliath, vice-president, business operations, McDonald's India (west & south), said, “Eating out has always been extremely popular in Goa and we see a lot of potential in this rapidly evolving cosmopolitan market. At McDonald's, we always focus on providing quality, service, cleanliness and value (QSC&V) to our customers and our priority has always been customer service and convenience. We are proud to bring the McDonald's experience to customers in Goa. Our local market knowledge combined with our proven track record of operating arrival of McDonald's restaurants will allow us to offer an exceptional experience to Goan customers.”

“With the arrival of McDonald's in Goa, we are confident that we can continue to drive growth in the region by bringing customers a truly unique good food, fast experience. Our customers in the state of Goa have a strong appreciation for food and we believe we can create a unique destination between home and work where they can relax, enjoy share and discover McDonald's world famous signature burgers and fries with friends and family. We come with a promise to delight the culinary senses of the Goan locals and bring along the classic McDonald's menu that is high on quality, great in taste and value for money. We are confident that McDonald's in Goa will continue to live up to its reputation of being a family brand that provides customers a quick, tasty and affordable eating out option,” he added.

Currently, the Goa restaurant has a team of 20 to 25 employees who are locally hired and trained to manage operations. It aims to generate more employment and provide training to local residents at par with international standards, create opportunities for first time job seekers while also adding to the strength of 7,500 individuals that they have directly employed across business operations in west & south India.

Treebo Hotels set to grow its India footprint across 40 cities by year end

Treebo Hotels, a franchise budget hotel chain, after tasting initial success with 85 hotels in 17 cities in India, is looking at growing their footprint to 200 hotels in 40 cities by year end. The hotel company which just completed a year of operations has been able to carve a space of its own in the budget hospitality space.  Talking to TravelBiz Monitor, Siddharth Gupta, Co-Founder, Treebo Hotels, said that they have been able to exceed their growth expectations in the first year and able to gain trust and confidence of hotel owners.  

Across 85 franchised hotels, Treebo currently manages an inventory of 2,300 rooms. Counting an average hotel inventory of 25 rooms, Gupta is hopeful of reaching minimum of 6,000 rooms under the Treebo network by the end of this calendar year.

Distinguishing Treebo from the ‘aggregators’ of budget hotels, Gupta said that the hotel company works on the same model of franchisee-franchisor relationship that larger brands like IHGs and Marriotts of the world works with. “We are not an aggregator or distribution partner for hotels. We are brand partners for hotel owners. We are responsible for both, driving business for owners as well as ensuring consistent service for the customers,” he explained. “Our relationship with all channel partners, including OTAs is very good. This helps us to deliver consistently high occupancies to our hotels,” he said.

Talking about combining technology and service elements to deliver total experience to customers, Gupta said that while they cannot compete with main stream hotels on the “talent front”, at Treebo Hotels they try to fill the void with the help of technology.  “We are a digital hotel. We function with the mind of an engineer and heart of an hotelier.  For us technology is the means to reach the end, i.e. service,” he said.

Gupta said that while individual hotels might look in terms of their location, room size, colour schemes, etc., they try to incorporate ‘standardization in terms of core aspects” of customer experience, like safety, hygiene, etc. across properties. He said that the company might look at introducing “sub-brands” for hotels with different specs in future.

As far as funding was concerned, Gupta said that they are an “efficiently managed” hotel company with “good cash position” currently, but might go for funding in future as and when need arises.

Essar Oil plans to roll out 5000 pumps in next 18 months

Essar Oil, India’s second largest private oil refiner, plans to nearly double its petrol pumps to 4,300 in next 18 months, a senior company executive  said.
“We have 2,225 petrol pumps now which we will increase to 4,300 in next 18 months,” Essar Oil’s chief executive officer (CEO) retail Madhur Taneja said.

The retail network expansion planned is on franchise model and will entail an investment of about Rs.2,500 crore by the pump owners. “We were the first private company to enter fuel retailing business when we in 2003 opened our first petrol station,” he said.
After diesel price was deregulated or freed from government control in October 2014, the expansion was restarted and network has reached 2,225 now, he said.

“We saw sales volume increase from 700,000 kilolitres in 2014-15 to 1.67 million kilolitres in 2015-16 and we hope to continue to grow at over 100% this year as well against an industry growth of 7-7.5%,” he said.

India’s first private sector petrol pump came up in Maharashtra only about 13 years ago in 2003. Essar Oil was therefore the first private company to enter petro product retailing in India at a time when the government was experimenting with the idea of deregulated oil pricing by freeing up the price of ATF.

Through the course of this regulation regime, Essar Oil, in a bid to keep its retail ambitions alive, provided financial support to its franchisees through various schemes, thus helping them in tiding over the difficult times. This earned the company the dealers’ trust. In October 2014 when diesel prices were completely deregulated, and private retailers like Essar Oil were given a level playing field with their PSU counterparts, the company already had a network of about 1,400 retail outlets. Over the last two years, Essar Oil has been on a ramp-up drive to create a larger retail footprint across the length and breadth of the country. Many outlets in its existing network were revived and work began on launching new Essar Oil pumps.
Today, Essar Oil has a pan-India network of 2,200+ fuel stations, while an additional 2,800+ stations are in various stages of commissioning.

Essar Oil has an asset-light business model. It pioneered the concept of setting up retail outlets using the franchisee-owned, franchisee-operated model wherein the dealer leases his land to Essar for 30 years and invests in setting up the entire infrastructure of the outlet. Essar focuses on enhancing franchisee business by supplying high quality petrol and diesel at competitive rates.

Vegetarian restaurant chain Saravana Bhavan to open hotels

Chennai based vegetarian restaurant chain Saravana Bhavan is planning to open hotels chain in India.

The group is soon launching a hotel in Chennai followed by many other openings.

The South Indian Restaurant chain which has entered 20 countries with over 63 outlets in these countries and about 37 in India will be focusing on hotel part of the business for coming fiscal.

“We will not be opening more restaurants this fiscal, this year will be focused on hotel openings,” said Shiva Kumar, MD, Saravana Bhavan.

Adding to the opportunity the brand is seeing in India, Kumar added, “In India there is plenty of scope and growth and our brand has lots of potential to grow as people like eating south Indian food.”

Keys Hotels to grow via the franchise model, management deals

Keys Hotels is staying away from building its own hotels and has decided to expand through franchises and management contracts to shield itself in a slow market. Having invested in seven hotels, the chain has now set its sights on smart cities such as Visakhapatnam, Calicut and Jaipur to grow through franchises and management contracts with almost 70 new hotels planned in the next 12 months.

Vikas Chadha, Executive Director & Chief Financial Officer, Keys Hotels, said: “Looking at the current market, we will now be expanding mainly through our budget and mid-market brands like Keys and Keys Lite. We will continue to take over unbranded properties and convert them under our brand as long as we get the right location mostly in tier II markets where there is lack of branded hotels.”

In fact, most of its added hotels would be in the budget and mid segment rather than its premium brand of Keys Prima. “The majority of our hotels would be under the Keys Lite brand in the budget segment with only a couple of them under Keys Prima since it is not easy to find luxury properties which can get converted,’’ he added.

With 20 properties and 1,800 rooms across brands like Keys (mid market), Keys Lite (budget) and Keys Prima (upper mid market), the hospitality company has been mainly catering to the business and corporate sector.

“Almost 70 per cent of our revenues come from the corporates to whom we also sell directly and also through OTAs,’’ he added. Becoming asset-light through franchises and management contracts is also expected to help the company reap profits.

Keys Hotels is promoted by Berggruen Holdings, a New York-headquartered proprietary fund, and has been present in India since 2006. “The fund was set up specifically for entering the Indian market under the Keys brand and has already invested $100 million in India,’’ added Chadha.

Lacoste to expand in non-metros; aims 10% sales from online channels

The Indian unit of French clothing firm Lacoste hopes as much as 10% of its sales to come through ecommerce channels, including its own recently launched portal, in the next 18-24 months.

The company, which currently doesn't sell its products on any third-party online platforms in India, is also in talks with ecommerce firms as part of its strategy to tap the online opportunity, Lacoste India Chief Executive Rajesh Jain said.

It is in advanced talks with at least two major e-tailers to open exclusive Lacoste stores on their platforms. Jain declined to name these companies, citing confidentiality agreements.

He said Lacoste would start selling its products on only those marketplaces that can offer it a premium, no discounting environment.

He expects Lacoste India to start selling on the marketplaces in the next two months.

According to Jain, the French company expects 3-5% of sales coming from the Lacoste official website and 5-7% from the e-tailers with which it would tie up.

Sports & Leisure Apparel, the licensee company of Lacoste in India, manufactures 95% of apparel at its Noida facility. The remaining 5% is imported.

The sports-inspired brand is looking to expand through franchise network.

Lacoste India has 49 brick-and-mortar stores. About 10 of these are franchised outlets and the rest are company-owned.

Lacoste, which entered India in 1993, started opening franchise stores just one-and-half year ago and it is now betting big on this strategy. In the past financial year, Lacoste opened seven stores out of which four were set up partners. In this financial year, all the six stores it plans to open would be through the franchise route. It also wants to expand beyond the metro cities.

"We wanted to leverage our presence now. So far we were expanding only in metros. But we saw some good retail real estate development in some tier I cities as well. So we thought of expanding into those markets. It makes sense for us to ideally have a local partner in these cities who understands the local customer needs and tastes," said Jain.

From now onwards, the company will focus more on opening franchise stores in non-metros, where the store size is small. It will open company-owned stores at important locations in metro cities, where it may not make commercial sense for the franchisee because of the huge investment required, he said.

Across the globe, Lacoste sells products in eight categories and, in India, apparel is the largest selling category for the brand with an about 89% share, followed by footwear at about 8%.