Lounge
How restaurants and bars plan playlists
Summary
Bars, restaurants and cafés use music to set the mood, whether euphoric or nostalgic, or just to build up patrons’ appetites
The first floor of Bandra Born is designed like a small Japanese bar. It features high seating, plenty of wood, and at the far end, a DJ console presided over by chef Gresham Fernandes. He plays electronic, funk, and hip-hop as drinks are poured and diners dance. Fernandes is music curator for Bandra Born, as well as for his chef friends Prateek Sadhu of Naar in Kasauli and Himanshu Saini of Trèsind Studio in Dubai.
“Music just sets it up," he says. It changes the mood, builds up an appetite, and makes people stay—the three main checkboxes of a restaurant, café, and bar. Follow Fernandes on Spotify for a treasure trove of tunes.
Like Fernandes, bar owner Yangdup Lama and restaurateur Manish Yadav have harnessed the power of music to offer diners more than just a good time.
Manish Yadav, who runs the speciality café Fig at Malcha in Delhi, takes his music seriously. Mornings at his café begin with jazz, followed by blues and R&B and in the afternoon, and then back to jazz. The energy of the crowd changes through the day and the music needs to match it, explains Yadav. The morning crowd is more focused and music by Norah Jones and Peter Cincotti helps. Lunch is fun and there’s some R&B with artists such as Ray Charles. People like to unwind in the evening with some good old jazz by George Benson.
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Yadav invested in high-end speakers from the Finnish audio company Amphion. Each comes with copper wiring to produce clean, warm notes, translating into sounds that are relaxing. “To plan playlists and audio, I rely on experts," he says. The song library is managed by the streaming service Roon, and the soundscape was designed by Gurugram-based The Audio Co. “We are a speciality café. It means there can be nothing artificial about our menu or music. It was important to invest in it," he explains.
Another reason is the location, Chanakyapuri, a district populated with diplomats. Yadav aimed to create a premium café for an audience that would have worked in New York, London or Tokyo. He explains that consumer behaviour of the top one percent of the Indian population is the same, irrespective of the city. They are people who go abroad and experience new things, and miss them when they return. “We aspire to offer these. To do so, food can’t be seen in isolation. Modes of art—be it paintings, music or thoughtfully designed furniture—matter," he says.
While Fig at Malcha caters to a mobile, globe-trotting crowd, the LCR Gymkhana restaurant in Pune serves old-school Punekars. Named for Law College Road, where it is located, it is in of the oldest residential neighbourhoods in the city. “People living here resist change. So we opened a restaurant that encapsulates nostalgia with its menu and music. Chai is served in white ceramic teapots, and bar bites of pineapple, cherry and cheese on toothpicks are reminiscent of good old gymkhana food," says co-founder Gaurav Kataria. The music complements the menu with classic chartbusters by The Beatles, Whitney Houston and Elvis Presley. Their guests love the songs so much that they have requested the playlist. The Spotify link is on their Instagram bio, unlike most restaurants, which promote their website or Zomato page.
In the dining space, sound is used not only to welcome guests but also to manage crowds. “There is a frequency (about 15,000 Hz) that cannot be heard by people over the age of 40. It’s like a spiky sound and can be annoying for those in their 20s and 30s," says Fernandes, adding that if someone plays tracks with this frequency, it will discourage a younger crowd from visiting.
This is a strategy that has worked: A story published by UK radio station Classic FM describes how McDonald’s in North Wales played soothing Beethoven music to create a calming atmosphere and prevent fights from breaking out among the teenagers who visited.
Behind the scenes too, music plays a role in the hospitality business. Lama, who runs three bars in Delhi and Gurugram, discovered this in the early days of his career when he worked at the Hyatt in the 1990s. In the afternoons, he was tasked with the mundane job of prepping garnishes and slicing lime. To make this work less boring, he played Eagles’ songs. About a decade ago, when he started the speakeasy-style bar Cocktail & Dreams in Gurugram, followed by Sidecar in Delhi, he hired a few Nepali men for his kitchen team. He noticed that they played traditional Nepali folk songs, dohri, on their phones while working. Then he would jokingly tell the team, “Aaj khaana acha banega (today the food will be good)." At his newest bar, The Brook in Gurugram, there is a separate sound system for the back kitchen for the staff to play their own music.
The Brook, a cosy 56-seater bar, is inspired by the Himalayas. The music reflects this in a thoughtful manner. While their playlist is dominated by Western numbers, the last 15 minutes before closing time are dedicated to songs from the hills. Lama names artists like Darjeeling’s Bipul Chettri, and Nepali bands Kutumba and 1974 AD as part of this special playlist. These songs are reserved for the end because most guests are unfamiliar with them. “By closing time, they let go," Lama notes, which makes them more welcoming of new tunes.
Music plays such a key role in Lama’s approach to work that for Cocktail & Dreams, which opened in 2012, he shared a song with the architect as a brief. It was US country musician Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar, which encapsulates the spirit of “come as you are".
Ultimately, that’s the purpose of songs—to strip away the frills and create a connection. At Bandra Born, near the DJ console, there are people in formals, probably just off work, grooving to music as if they were on a beach in Goa.
