The Maratha Mess Story I chose to explore one of our favourite dinner hangouts for the retail management assignment. Located in one of the narrow bylanes of Sankhli amidst the busy marketplace is a small home run eating joint with a Marathi name, commonly known as Maratha Mess by all GIM students. Like the tradition every year, our seniors handed us down their knowledgebase of eating joints around the campus. Maratha Mess was the only pure eatery in the vicinity serving pure vegetarian lunch and dinner. Having a lot of vegetarian friends, back in first term we wanted to try this place out. But strangely none of the Sankhli dwellers knew any shop of this name. Later we found out it was simple counterpart given by the students of GIM to its relatively complex Marathi name. As we walked into the house of which the first two rooms serve the purpose of ‘restaurant’, we were courteously greeted by an uncle. We came back highly satisfied with our Aloo Puri and Shrikhand. This was in first semester. Today, after numerous such lunch and dinner visits to the Marathi Uncle’s place, thanks to this project in the last term, I have had a chance to hear out our ‘Uncle’, or Mr. Anand Maskar’s story. When I approached him with my project requirement, he greeted me with his typical smile saying “Aao aj aloo paratha bana hai”. I was startled to hear that his business of serving home cooked food has been running for almost fifty years now. His father had set it up in 1968 sensing the demand for simple lunch and dinner meals for the miners of Goa. He told me how his father successfully ran it for twenty years after which he unfortunately fell sick and passed away. Mr Anand had to take up the business at the young age of 18 and has been running it since then. His wife has been helping with the cooking. Initially they had to face questions regarding the practicality of running a pure vegetarian restaurant in a place like Goa where locals would choose having fish over anything else, every meal. But from experience, they realised that the demand for a healthy home cooked vegetarian meal made their regular customers like miners and bankers feel like they were enjoying the luxury of eating at home. When asked about his expansion plans, he said he has not been able to expand because his house is on rent and his landlord was never cooperative with his plans of expansion of the eating joint inside the same house. Given a chance, someday he would like to make it flashier and more ‘restaurant like’. When asked if he considers other restaurants a threat to his business as there is no dearth of good eating places here, Goa being one of our countries top tourist destinations. He stressed on the fact that healthy home cooked vegetarian meals is the USP of his business and he doesnt consider other restaurants a threat as nobody is eating into his customer segment. He added that foreigners have also tasted and liked his simple and easy-on-the-stomach food. When asked what he plans to do with his business in times to come, Mr Anand said that his daughter, who is pursuing her Bachelors in Arts from St Xaviers College, does not wish to continue this business. He plans to take it forward for another 15 to 20 years and then close it down, as this business has been giving him enough returns to lead a relaxed life post retirement. He said GIM students are the most frequent visitors for both their lunch and dinner offerings. Apart from us students, locals working in Sankhli also come over when they grow tired of the oil heavy curries served in other restaurants and want to have fat free healthy food. In fact today the demand for home cooked food is growing with people falling prey to diseases and turning more health conscious. He narrated an interesting incidence when someone had once asked him about his profession and he had confidently answered him saying “I am a surgeon”, leaving him pretty impressed. The same person bumped into Mr Anand a couple of days later outside Maratha Mess and was surprised seeing him at the counter. When he asked Mr Anand, “Why, I thought you were a surgeon?”, Mr Anand smiled and replied, “I stop so many people from getting afflicted with stomach infections and digestion troubles by serving healthy food. Am I any less than a surgeon?” I burst into laughter. Though Mr Anand is not the typical grocery shop retailer, his high spirits and will power that have kept him going in his business of selling home cooked pure vegetarian food in an area surrounded by fish and chicken loving customers is what got me interested enough in his retail management story.
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 19:09:23 +0000
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