The restaurant business is growing at one of the fastest rates in India, all thanks to the growing ‘revenge dining’ by customers. Valued at $41.1 billion in 2022, the sector is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 11.9 percent and reach $79.65 billion by 2028.

According to experts, Restaurants are performing much better than pre-covid, their overall numbers have crossed the pre-covid levels, bill values have even gotten higher, the footfalls have increased, and it’s all a positive story coming after two years of hiatus. Though we can’t see it as a happy ending, however, a new beginning for sure. Here are the top 6 trends that are going to shape the future of the Restaurant Business in the near future:

Delivery is Here to Stay: As more and more people are addicted to getting restaurant comfort delivered at home, delivery is one of the fastest segments growing in India. “I think delivery is one of the top trends that I see as people started to order at home and in order to do that we started premium delivery. Since people were unable to go to the restaurant and wanted to have that experience at home, with brands like Pot Pot and Noshi wanted to tap into that market and we did that quite successfully. In fact, we recently launched our first Pot Pot dining outlet where in a rare situation a cloud kitchen has been transitioned into a dining outlet,” shared Varun Tuli, MD at Yum Yum Tree which operates brands like Yum Yum Cha amongst others.

Creating the Experience at Home: “When we started Daryaganj 3 years ago, we never wanted to go into delivery and focused on a dining experience that involves 5 senses and that was what we focused on. Every single detail, what you see, what you hear, the music, the material we are serving in and obviously the food, the taste, and interior,” added Amit Bagga, Co-Founder at Daryaganj. The brand has created a delivery box that reflected the restaurant’s touch and feel. They also created a certain fragrance that they used in restaurants with the envelope that goes in the delivery…Also, the brand tied up with gaana.com to play the exact same song they played in the restaurant once the person opens the box and scan the QSR code provided. So, that’s how they created the whole involvement of 5 senses delivery.

Investing in People: “A lot of people especially the corporate level people work across multiple brands, multiple verticals so we try to consolidate our core team and have people look into many different aspects and facets of business but now we are in a stage post covid where we have people to invest in, building the sky scripts,” pointed Rakshay Dhariwal of the award-winning restaurant Jamun and PCO.

Multi-Tasking Needs to be Acknowledged: “We don’t usually use our manpower the best. Multi-tasking should be there. A service guy or someone in the bar should be used in the backend and that’s something we need to look into,” concluded Vishal Anand of Moonshine Food Ventures that operate award-winning restaurant Saga in Gurgaon.

The annual spending of middle-class households on Fast Food Restaurants in India’s Tier II and III cities has grown by 108 percent in the last two years from Rs 2,500 to Rs. 4,500. Hence, we can say that it’s the right time to enter the Indian market with so many trends attracting consumers giving room to grow to everyone. Another trend that has seen great numbers is the rise of the Ready to cook at the home market where people have started to make food at home using ingredients that they find at a restaurant and create restaurant-level food at home.

Also, people want to eat food from outside more often rather than once or twice a week. If they were eating twice from the same kitchen now they are eating 4 times. So, with this diversity cuisine has come up, and where restaurants are doing multiple brands with the same cuisine.