Outsourcing is becoming the backbone for supply of petit fours, entremets and desserts to the hospitality industry. If space and resource constraints persist, hotels and restaurants may go all out to outsource these products from third parties in near future. AB’s Test Kitchen, founded by the Master Chef Abhiru Biswas, is supplying ready-to-eat desserts and chocolates to top luxury hotels and restaurants
Master Chef Abhiru Biswas
After serving as a pastry chef for 20 years at leading 5-star hotels, restaurants and confectionery around the world, Chef Abhiru Biswas has been inspired by his travels to set up his own kitchen which aims to become a baking empire and change the game of business in this sector.
Biswas had a different calling when he decided to hang up his boots as an employee and turn an entrepreneur. At his pioneering venture, the country’s luxury hotel industry tasted the first blood of outsourcing that had earlier permeated other sectors such as I-T and pharmaceuticals.
Although this is not a trend seen in India before, hotels and restaurants in other countries have been practising such a business even today. Infact, the Hong Kong based Swiss chef, Gerard Dubois, exports desserts to 41 countries including most of Europe, thereby creating an empire of its own.
Breaking that no-no, Biswas convinced his first customer, who happened to be none other than Chef Atul Kocchar, for his famous venture NRI (Not Really Indian), where desserts go to each table by a sweet cart, rightly called Mithaiwala. Everything started to fall in place as he acquired customers like LIMA, Taj Lands End, and corporate houses in Mumbai’s BandraKurla Complex. In a few months, the kitchen would be ready to ship French desserts, chocolates, innovative entremets and petit fours to a few more five-star hotels and restaurants, which had hitherto known to outsource only raw materials and pre-mixes.
Being the only Indian chef to have been a technical advisor for Barry Callebeaut, Biswashas had the opportunity to meet influential chefs. To give effect to his dreams and passion, he quit his job at one of the world’s largest chocolate makers to hire four chefs and set up a kitchen in Mumbai’s suburban Goregaon.
“Hotels face immense pressure in terms of the costs of space, energy and human resource. On top of these is the logistics for raw materials, the management of which has become a headache,” says Chirag Madia, a hotel industry consultant, elaborating on the reasons why outsourcing of bakery and pastry product are catching up.
Most hotels, which AB’s Test Kitchen supplies to, have full-fledged pastry department with accomplished chefs in command. For instance, St. Regis has Pastry Chef Savio Fernandes designing menu and overseeing quality control, although the products are crafted by AB’s Test Kitchen. However, hotels do not see it as duplication but as value addition.
Biswas knows his is an untrodden path. It was all the more reason for him to buttress his outsourcing business with a brickand- mortar one. That was the origin of Bombay Bakery Wala that delivers fresh bread to households in Goregaon area every morning.
Some of his products include delicate desserts like Brownie With Masala Chai. Brickhouse’s Chili-spiked Chocolate COLA Cake, Passion Chocolate Chaud and Gondhoraj Lemon Basil Baked Cheese Cake are manufactured under this mass-oriented brand.
Chef Abhiru is already in talks with prospective partners to take this brand to Delhi, Kolkata and Bangalore. Both the businesses will stay unconventional. And the result is that there will not be retail outlets for the products churned out under the two brands. The marketing will be anchored in the lee of online media.
From Anurag Dikshit’s online gambling firm Party Gaming to the Bansal duo’s e-commerce venture Flipkart, out-of-the-box thinking has transformed the way people fulfill their wants. AB’s Test Kitchen is pushing its luck too — to change the way hotels fulfill their requirement for pastries.
