Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, Monginis man

Anita Sharan
12 July 1999

The Rs 52-crore Monginis Foods Ltd. is putting up a website of its own. Now why would a cake shop put up a website? Because although it positions itself as "The Cake Shop", Monginis is expanding as a chain across the country.

It wants to be the national ''cake shop'' retail boutique, occupying its own niche. Starting out as a cake brand that sold out of Mumbai''s Akbarally''s department store a long time ago, it''s now a cake and savouries chain across six cities--Mumbai, Calcutta, Hyderabad, Pune, Nashik and Rajkot. Its cake outlets currently number just over 200. As many as 40 of them opened only last year. Seven cake factories are already up and running and four more are in various stages of completion at Baroda, Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Goa. That adds four more cities to the six for this year.

All factories and outlets are franchises, and Zoher Khorakiwala, chairman and managing director of Monginis Foods, believes this is the best way to expand. Being a small company, Monginis cannot really afford to go for the huge investments that own-shops and factories would require. "Besides, local tastes vary widely. The best way to deal with this is to have local people making and selling Monginis products."

Monginis'' acceptance beyond Mumbai has been good enough for the company to start thinking about aggressive expansion. Since its products are priced lower than those that sell out of shops like of Taj Birdy''s and Croissants, etc., it is managing to draw crowds.

"On the opening day at Rajkot, we did Rs 37,000 worth of sales. Sales have since averaged out at Rs 20,000 a day, but that could well be because of the summer heat. In Nashik, our sales touched Rs 45,000 on the first day,'''' says Khorakiwala.

As for expansion, the grand plan is 1,000 shops across 40 cities in about six years'' time. In four years, Monginis is targeting 700 shops. That''s big numbers indeed! But, as Khorakiwala says, cake retailing is in a growth phase in India and there are immense opportunities. "In Calcutta, over the last three years, 63 cake shops have come up. In Pune, it''s been 10 shops and the city has scope for at least 25 shops before the market gets into a mature phase. We got so many enquiries from Rajkot when we went shopping around for franchisees."