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Episode 134 · Consumer · 74 min

Scale without changing the taste

Empire is 58 years old and took roughly thirty years to open its second outlet; today it rings up an average 35,000 bills a day across some 47 outlets. Shakir Haq's claim is that none of that growth came from a new dish. It came from industrialising sameness, with numbered temperature-controlled kettles and hydraulic arms replacing the seven-foot ladles the masters once swung, so the ghee rice tastes the same at 2:30am in Majestic as it did to a four-year-old in the eighties.

Consumer India Leadership & org Data & digitisation

Shakir Haq

CEO, Empire · with Vishal Krishna

1:13:45

Said in this episode

▶ 25:37

58 years

Age of the Empire business

Both host and guest date the brand to 58 years, long enough that grandfathers now bring grandchildren to the same outlets.

▶ 11:40

Outlets in operation

34 stores in Bengaluru plus kiosks in malls and roughly 14 cloud kitchens; the vegetarian brand runs only on the highways.

▶ 46:09

35,000

Bills rung up on an average day

Split roughly 60% offline and 40% online, which Haq translates to about 45,000-50,000 people served a day.

▶ 1:00:26

~4,000

People on the payroll

A little under 4,000 today, of whom only about 200 to 250 sit at the corporate level.

▶ 1:08:57

2,600 → 700

COVID headcount cut, in three months

Back to roughly 2,600 within fourteen months; the caption garbles the return figure between 2,600 and 2,700.

▶ 25:45

90%

New menu developments that fail

Haq's own estimate of the strike rate on new product development: customers come knowing what they want and reject the rest.

The brief

The argument in sixty seconds

Haq's claim is that a restaurant chain scales on sameness, not novelty: he reckons nine out of ten new product developments fail, because customers walk in already knowing exactly what they want, so the real job is industrialising the thing that already works. Empire took about thirty years to open its second outlet, computerised billing in 2003 before it even had a point of sale, built a central kitchen in 2009, and spent two and a half years pushing through the resistance of its masters (traditional cooks who knew the menu by heart but not what a boiling point or a braise was) into a facility now run like an FMCG plant, with recipes stored in intelligent kettles and mechanical arms where seven-foot ladles used to be. The people argument runs alongside the machinery. A senior figure in his wife's family told him to ride in the trucks with the drivers before giving anyone an order, so he spent his first two years on the floor; the group's assistant president for finance and operations joined in 1999 as a clerk at the billing counter; and only after six months of quiet study, and with the family board's consent, did he fire a general manager in his first week as CEO. He is bootstrapped and intends to stay that way until the business deserves the right partner, having watched funded Bangalore legacy brands vanish. The stakes sit in the numbers: just under 4,000 people on the payroll, 45,000-50,000 diners a day, and a COVID round trip from 2,600 employees to 700 and back in fourteen months.

Worth your time if you are

Next-generation heirs about to walk into the family firm

F&B operators trying to hold quality past the tenth outlet

Founders weighing aggregators against their own delivery fleet

Anyone hiring blue-collar teams that keep walking out

Bengalureans who grew up on ghee rice at 2am

Episode map

Where the conversation travels

Every block is a chapter, coloured by what it's about. Click any of it to jump straight to that minute on YouTube.

Consumer IndiaLeadership & orgData & digitisationFounder journeyHiring & talentProduct strategy

01Cold open: a piece of Bangalore's history 0:00 Vishal frames the episode through his own family business and his four-year-old self being taken for grilled chicken, while Haq describes a 58-year-old brand of, by and for the people, one that wants a board of customers alongside its board of directors, because it sells emotions rather than food. 02Thirty years to a second outlet 3:53 The second Empire came roughly three decades after the first, and every jump in scale broke consistency again: computerised billing in 2003, a central kitchen in 2009, and two and a half years of open resistance from masters who had only ever cooked to a headcount, not a recipe. 03The daily habitual brand 8:08 Haq refuses the speciality-versus-QSR question and calls Empire a daily habitual brand, a stop already inside your day's plan rather than a decision you make. That is the reason a flight landing at 2:30am still ends in ghee rice and grilled chicken at Majestic. 04Forty-seven outlets, and software that arrived early 11:34 Thirty-four stores in Bengaluru and about 47 outlets in all, including roughly 14 cloud kitchens; the chain moved from computerised billing in 2003 to point of sale in 2013 and had waiters taking orders on handhelds around 2011, before aggregator algorithms started sorting customer choice for it. 05Back from Dubai at 25, into resistance 16:05 A childhood spent watching factory documentaries and a stint in Dubai learning European food-safety compliance gave him the blueprint, but the management he inherited did not want it, so he spent two years winning trust on the floor, following the advice of a senior figure in his wife's family who had sat in the delivery trucks with his own drivers at 18. 06Firing a general manager in week one 21:34 A vendor of three decades' standing warned him about a general manager; six months of quiet study later he took office and fired the man in his first week, having first carried the evidence to a family board that knew the accused far better than it knew him. 07Science for the masters, kettles for the ladles 24:50 Because Indian cooking is complex and the customer is the real quality controller, Empire's answer was science: masters who did not know a boiling point or a braise now work numbered, temperature-controlled kettles that store recipes, picking ingredients from a store run like a supermarket in a facility modelled on an FMCG plant. 08Experiments: coin parottas, grills and boba 28:58 The coin parotta began as leftover dough a master fried for himself and was named over a cup of chai, and never protected as IP; the grill machine imported in 1995 for a lakh of rupees became the signature; and the newest bets are an Easy Bites QSR line at about 11% of revenue and a boba counter Haq personally dislikes. 09Aggregator commissions and the profitable-unit rule 35:50 Scale does not buy Empire a special commission: the rate follows average order value, and delivery containers quietly carry 5 to 8% more food. So Haq argues every single outlet must be profitable on its own, and says he fought the board during COVID to shut the ones that were not. 10Why a mass brand keeps its call centre 40:00 A mass brand cannot be exclusive to any platform, so Empire runs its own app since 2010, its own riders, and a call centre that logically costs more than it should, because 350 to 400 people a day still prefer ordering from a human voice that recognises them. 11Backward linkage: price and volume, guaranteed 43:40 Today's horizontal buying from poultry suppliers is meant to become vertical: contract farming where Empire guarantees farmers both price and volume, an MSP-like promise it can make because 35,000 bills a day mean the volume will not fall, and because food inflation and climate risk make backward linkage a cost-leadership question. 12Bootstrapped, and getting future ready 46:40 Launching new brands is not a necessity, but accelerating young F&B brands is tempting, because trade secrets stay secret while knowledge can be shared; on capital, Haq has watched funded Bangalore legacy brands die and would rather stay self-funded, equipping the company to be future ready for a family office, private equity or an eventual listing. 13Why 90% of leavers don't leave for money 51:36 Only about one in ten who quit go for better pay; the rest leave over food, accommodation and culture, which is why Empire recruits through north-eastern communities and state skill bodies, is planning a 90-day in-house induction programme, and why Haq argues India needs plumbers and electricians more than it needs another degree. 14Culture, women on the highway, waterfall of excellence 57:40 Values are taught in the business rather than the house. Haq says a board member has every right to fire the CEO who is also his son. With just under 4,000 people, 200 to 250 of them corporate, the company has professionalised HR while insisting the security guard at the door performs the same excellence as the CEO. 15Losing his father, then losing the cash 1:02:10 The careless middle child found purpose when his father fell ill and died around 2015, and again when COVID left the company penniless with 95% of its stores on rent. He and a colleague met 61 of about 68 landlords over six and a half months, four days a week, to win a 10% discount worth as little as ₹50,000, or three people's salaries. 162,600 to 700 and back in fourteen months 1:08:10 Headcount fell from about 2,600 to 700 in three months and returned within fourteen, which he calls practical rather than hard, under zero tolerance for fraud and harassment; he closes on Unreasonable Hospitality, snooker bought during lockdown, crime shows, motorsport, and an ambition to be worth funding rather than valued.

Timeline

The arc, briefly

Fifty-eight years of one Bengaluru restaurant, and the thirty it took to open a second outlet.

1995A grill machine costs a lakh of rupees. Shakir's father and uncles brought the idea back from their travels and imported the machine at what was then an enormous price. The grilled chicken it produced is what the brand gets asked for now.

1999A man joins at the billing counter. He came in taking orders across the counter. Twenty-five years on he heads finance for the group.

2003Billing gets computerised before there is a point of sale. Shakir calls it the biggest technology risk the business had taken, in a kitchen still run entirely by hand.

2009A central kitchen, and the third generation walks in. Shakir started at Empire the same year the kitchen was built, back from Dubai at 25 with European food safety and compliance training and facing a management that did not want his changes. That kitchen is now run as a centre of excellence.

2010-13An app, then a point of sale. The first app went out in 2010, store experiments ran at Kolar and Mysore Road in 2011, and the point of sale arrived in 2013, a decade after the billing system.

2015-16He loses his father. The man he calls his biggest inspiration, and the start of the rough patch. Shakir went to IIM for a family business and entrepreneurship programme in 2016 and brought in consultants to teach the company what it did not know.

2017A call centre nobody needs. Logically he does not need one and it costs him more, and he has kept it because 350 to 400 calls a day have come in consistently for the last three and a half to four years.

20202,600 people down to 700 in three months. Covid left the company penniless with his father gone. They were back to roughly 2,600 within fourteen months, and he refuses to call the cut a hard decision, only a practical one.

Today47 outlets and 35,000 bills a day. Thirty-four stores in Bengaluru, mall kiosks and about 14 cloud kitchens, feeding 45,000 to 50,000 people a day on a payroll just under 4,000, of whom only 200 to 250 sit at corporate. Still bootstrapped, and nine in ten new menu ideas still fail.

Takeaways

Ideas to carry out of this hour

Consistency is the product; novelty is the risk

Haq estimates that nine out of ten new product developments at Empire have failed, and he treats that as information rather than defeat: customers arrive knowing precisely what they came for, so serving them something they did not ask for is the actual error. The customer, in his framing, is the quality control, the quality assurance and the critic all at once. What differentiates the chain is the sameness of the outlet, the welcome and the plate rather than a better kebab, and that is the thing most well-known brands compromise first when they scale.

▶ 25:37 ▶ 25:52 ▶ 42:49

Empire bought technology before vendors came selling it

Computerised billing arrived in 2003, when the chain did not yet have a point of sale. The manual system of marking a waiter's items on paper and totting them up at close had simply stopped working past three restaurants. Point of sale followed in 2013, an in-house app in 2010, and handheld order-taking on the floor around 2011. Each step was described as the biggest risk of its moment, taken because scale had removed the option of trying it quietly in one outlet first.

▶ 4:25 ▶ 13:36 ▶ 31:46

A central kitchen is an FMCG plant, not a bigger kitchen

The 2009 central kitchen took two and a half years to get under control, with seniors standing at 5am waiting for masters who were actively resisting the change. What replaced it is a centre of excellence deliberately modelled on a consumer-goods factory: numbered, temperature-controlled kettles that store recipes, hydraulic arms in place of the seven-foot ladles masters once swung, a store the master shops like a supermarket, plus butchery, processing and in-house temperature-controlled logistics. The masters knew the menu by heart but not that water boils at 100 degrees, or what braising and stewing meant, so the science had to be layered on top of the legacy rather than instead of it.

▶ 6:20 ▶ 26:38 ▶ 27:40

Win trust on the floor before you exercise authority

The advice came from a senior figure in his wife's family who had taken over a Kerala distribution business at 18 and spent two years riding in the trucks with the drivers so they knew he would not throw them aside. Haq did the same: two years of being seen doing the work, because in a hands-on, 24x7 restaurant business, orders issued from a cabin do not land. The proof of the model is the group's assistant president for finance and operations, who joined in 1999 as a clerk at the billing counter and rose over 25 years.

▶ 19:00 ▶ 20:01 ▶ 20:32

The first firing needed a vendor, six months and the board

A vendor of three or four decades' standing came forward to say there was a problem with one of the general managers. The relationship surfaced it, not the org chart. Haq ran a six-month study before taking office, then fired the man in his first week as CEO, crippled on procurement until those same decades-old vendors said, in effect, tell us what you need. Crucially he had to carry evidence to a family board that knew the accused better than the returning heir, and that could easily have read the move as entitlement throwing its weight around.

▶ 21:34 ▶ 21:49 ▶ 22:36

Aggregators are growth partners once you do the arithmetic

Being Empire buys no special commission rate, Haq says: the commission tracks average order value and the aggregator's own cost, and that is simply economics. What scale does buy is the discipline to absorb it: delivery and takeaway portions run 5 to 8% heavier because containers have to look full, particularly on gravies and rice, and that has to be engineered back out through standardisation. The counter-move is presence rather than exclusivity: every platform, plus an own app, own riders and a call centre, because a mass brand must be reachable wherever the customer already is.

▶ 36:35 ▶ 36:56 ▶ 40:00

Every outlet must earn its own profit

Haq calls himself a strong advocate of unit economics and rejects the portfolio logic in which 60% of profitable outlets carry the other 40%. COVID is where the lesson was paid for: he says he fought the board and the management hard to shut the loss-making outlets, and that they eventually understood why. The same discipline explains cloud kitchens run as separate units rather than as extensions of a restaurant's kitchen, and the admission that money was genuinely lost in cloud kitchens, in the central kitchen and in early technology.

▶ 37:38 ▶ 37:54 ▶ 38:11

Nine in ten who leave are not leaving for money

Haq puts pay at roughly 10% of the reasons staff quit; the other 90% is food, accommodation and culture, and he notes that people who leave often come back, having found nothing better. So the fix is structural: recruiting through north-eastern communities, state skill-development bodies and universities under contract, an induction and on-the-job programme, and plans for a 90-day recruit-and-train course open to a tenth-standard failure who shows the drive. The wider argument is that India is producing degrees where it needs plumbers, electricians and vocational skill.

▶ 52:53 ▶ 53:42 ▶ 56:52

The numbers, drawn

What the episode measures

Every figure below was said on air, with timestamps included and caveats kept.

Empire's headcount through COVID

people employed

As stated in conversation: about 2,600 people down to 700 within three months, and back within fourteen. The auto-caption garbles the return figure between 2,600 and 2,700, so the lower value is shown.▶ 1:08:57

Thirty years to the second outlet

the jumps in scale, in the order Haq dates them

Every jump in scale broke consistency again, so the answer kept arriving as plumbing rather than menu. Haq says billing was computerised in 2003 because marking a waiter's items on paper and totting them up at close had stopped working past three restaurants.▶ 4:25

What replaced the seven-foot ladle

the kitchen before, during and after the central kitchen

Haq's answer to the complexity of Indian cooking, with the customer as the real quality controller. The masters knew the menu by heart but not that water boils at 100 degrees, so the science went on top of the legacy rather than in place of it.▶ 26:38

An average day, and what the online half costs

share of 35,000 bills, then the same dish by channel

Haq's split of an average day's bills, which he translates to 45,000 to 50,000 people served. The overweight on the delivered portion is his figure too, and it is why he treats the aggregator commission as arithmetic rather than a negotiation.▶ 46:09

Worth keeping

Lines that stay

We're not just selling food, we're selling emotions.

▶ 2:50

You always thought of a board of directors, a board of members — we are very keen on having a board of customers.

▶ 2:04

We've climbed the ladder of failure first, and then reached the top.

▶ 7:37

I might be your son at home, but here I'm the CEO and you're the board member — you have every right to fire me, or question me in front of the team.

▶ 58:54

Trade secrets will remain secret, but knowledge can always be shared.

▶ 47:31

Clips that travel

Short on time? Start here

Operators scaling past a single location

Thirty years to a second outlet

How consistency broke at every jump in scale: computerised billing in 2003, a central kitchen in 2009, and two and a half years of resistance from the masters.

3:53 → 8:08 · 4 min ▶ Watch clip

Next-generation heirs walking into the family firm

Trust first, authority later

The advice to ride in the trucks with the drivers, the billing clerk who now heads finance, and the two-year apprenticeship in being seen.

19:00 → 24:30 · 6 min ▶ Watch clip

F&B founders chasing consistency at scale

Kettles, recipes and the FMCG plant

Why Indian cooking resists scale, and how masters who never learned a boiling point were re-equipped with temperature-controlled kettles and stored recipes.

24:53 → 28:58 · 4 min ▶ Watch clip

Anyone who thinks brand IP is a formality

The coin parotta nobody patented

Leftover dough, a cup of chai and a customer's throwaway line created a menu item now sold frozen across India, with no protection at all.

29:42 → 33:17 · 4 min ▶ Watch clip

Founders who have lived through a demand collapse

61 landlords, six and a half months

COVID with 95% of stores on rent, the grind for a 10% discount worth three salaries, and the headcount round trip from 2,600 to 700 and back.

1:07:04 → 1:09:20 · 2 min ▶ Watch clip

Glossary

The jargon, unpacked

Masters

The traditional cooks who run Indian restaurant kitchens from memory. Empire's Rajans, Ibrahims and Peters ask only how many people you plan to serve, and get the taste right without a recipe card.

Centre of Excellence

What Empire's 2009 central kitchen became: a butchery, hot kitchen, processing lines, supply-chain management and in-house temperature-controlled logistics, deliberately modelled on an FMCG factory rather than a restaurant kitchen.

Cloud kitchen

A delivery-only kitchen with no dine-in outlet attached; Empire runs about 14 of them as separate units alongside its physical stores.

Daily habitual brand

Haq's term for a brand that works as a default rather than a decision, already inside the customer's plan for the day because an outlet is wherever they happen to be.

Unit economics

The discipline of requiring every individual outlet to be profitable on its own, rather than letting a profitable 60% cover the losses of the other 40%.

Average order value (AOV)

The typical basket size on a delivery app, which is what an aggregator's commission is calibrated against, and the reason Haq says scale alone does not win a better rate.

Horizontal vs vertical integration

Buying poultry from multiple suppliers directly (horizontal) versus moving into contract farming and live birds with guaranteed price and volume for farmers (vertical). This is Empire's stated path to a farm-to-fork linkage.

Coin parotta

The coin-sized parotta invented at Empire from the offcuts a master fried for himself, named over a cup of chai by a customer, and now sold frozen by brands across the country.

Connections

If this resonated, go here next

EP 59 · Consumer

Full transcript

The whole conversation, searchable

Auto-generated captions, lightly cleaned. Click a timestamp to open that moment on YouTube.