Celebrations are in order for Delhi’s favourite café chain, Café Delhi Heights, as they complete 12 successful years in the business. On this occasion, founder Vikrant Batra speaks to the Sunday Guardian in an exclusive chat. Excerpts from an edited interview:
Q: What was your vision when you started Café Delhi Heights?
A: The inspiration for it came from our family. As we are a joint family, all three generations enjoy going out together. Earlier, we would always struggle to decide which place to go where our mother and daughters would be equally comfortable. A place that would be hip enough for our sons yet have a few traditional dishes on the menu to make my dad happy. We could never find a place that was easy-going enough for us to spend quality time together as a family and offer quality food at the same time. To answer all these questions, we opened Cafe Delhi Heights.
We have had many ups and downs in this journey, but we have learned from our mistakes and the feedback given by our customers. I am very happy and thankful for the support that all our customers have given us over the years, which has enabled us to open over 34 outlets across India. We aim to keep growing and serving our customers good food.
Q: How does it feel to reach this big milestone of a dozen years in the industry?
A: It definitely feels great because we have worked really hard to accomplish our goals. I have given all that I have to Café Delhi Heights. We started our journey from one outlet at Crosspoint Mall, Gurugram. Today we have 34 outlets and are planning to open more. We started in an era where ‘Café’ was a new term in India. In fact, we were the pioneers who brought café culture to the capital. On the completion of 12 years we promise to continue to serve our audience with more innovations, outlets, consistency and love.
Q: Tell us about your expansion plans.
A: We believe in growing and sharing. Hence, we have aggressive expansion plans pan-India, targeting 10 new outlets every year. We have already expanded our café in the cities of Ludhiana, Chandigarh, Lucknow and Bengaluru. We also plan to expand to Dehradun, Faridabad, Amritsar and other cities. This includes branches of Café Delhi Heights and our other brand Comfort Bakehouse by Café Delhi Heights as well.
Apart from expansion plans, we believe wholeheartedly in two things and strive to achieve them sincerely: customer satisfaction and culinary perfection. Our growth strategy and the motto of Café Delhi Heights is serving our customers good food. Through social media campaigns, strategic collaborations with different brands and more pop-up events, we hope to grow our brand further.
Q: Do you have any new and exciting culinary offerings on the cards?
A: At Café Delhi Heights, we organise different food festivals on a regular basis. These include theme-based ones like ‘Rice Above the Rest’, ‘Fish Trap’ festival, Aperol menu, Juicy Lucy burger festivals, pasta festival, monsoon specials and others. We also offer interesting combos for occasions like Valentine’s Day, the IPL season and more. Next up, we have a special ‘Back to School’ menu, Mangolicious festival, and ‘Chai Pakora’ menu that will soon be introduced at our outlets. Every three months, our guests receive a booklet that includes our special menus and activities planned in that time.
Q: How does your other brand Comfort Bakehouse by Café Delhi Heights fit into your plans?
A: Comfort Bakehouse by Café Delhi Heights began as a boutique display at our Saket outlet. However, its success led to us open it as an exclusive store in Vatika Business Park, Gurugram recently. More stores for this brand will open soon. Comfort Bakehouse by Café Delhi Heights offers comfort food that includes savouries, sweets and an easy everyday menu. Another exciting plan in the works is our cloud kitchen exclusively for our super popular Juicy Lucy burgers. Since we began as a dine-in brand, our focus was always on our dine-in menu, however during the pandemic, we had to learn to diversify. That’s when the Juicy Lucy burgers cloud kitchen idea arose. Having received a great response to it, we plan to make that a permanent offering as well.
As Delhi gets a cultural facelift, there is clearly lots to look forward to.
Noor Anand Chawla pens lifestyle articles for various publications and her blog www.nooranandchawla.com.