Supermarket chain Spencer’s Retail and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) have tied up with a restaurant group to sell trademark-protected dosas, the popular south Indian snack, as they seek to provide a diverse spread of options to consumers at their outlets.
Spencer’s Retail, part of the RPG Enterprises group, will open its first Dosa Plaza restaurant at the Nerul railway station complex in suburban Mumbai in mid-March. While this will be part of its Spencer’s Daily format, the company also plans to open more express and restaurant outlets at its stores in suburban Kharghar, Panvel and Kandivili in Mumbai.
A Spencer’s executive said the company, with more than 300 outlets across the country, plans to take Dosa Plaza to its store in Aurangabad in Maharashtra.
The quick-service outlets are run by Prem Sagar Dosa Plaza, a restaurant chain that made nearly 25 crore in revenues in 2007, a long way from its genesis in a tiny kiosk outside a suburban Mumbai railway station.
Having grown to more than 32 franchise outlets in the country, its managing director T. Ganapathy said the company has now firmed up plans to set up stand-alone restaurants as well.
At least five such restaurants are scheduled to open over the next three months in Mumbai and Gandhidham in Gujarat. As part of these plans, the specialty chain has tied up to open its dosa eateries at HPCL’s petrol pumps, as the petroleum firm has drawn up independent plans to set up large family restaurants along national and state highways.
The first of these Dosa Plazas will come up along the Mumbai-Ahmedabad, Mumbai-Bangalore and Mumbai-Nashik highways.
Domestic growth is only part of the agenda. On 15 March, the company will open its first Dosa Plaza restaurant at Auckland, New Zealand—a 1,800 sq. ft outlet that will cater to the expat population there. It plans to follow this up with at least 15 such outlets in New Zealand, and at Sydney and Melbourne in Australia.
Prem Sagar Dosa Plaza has also entered into master franchise agreements for outlets at Leicester in London, as well as Sharjah, Dubai and Bahrain in West Asia.
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