Chatar Patar: Standardizing Street Food Across India

“Chatar Patar” is the brand owned by Chatar Patar foods Pvt Ltd. It is envisaged as a chain of eateries that serve hawker style Indian street food that is standardized, yet customizable, giving extensive width within its scope of products that is hygienically prepared and served.

BWDisrupt interacted with Prashant Kulkarni, Co-Founder and Director of Chatar Patar Food Pvt. Ltd. He launched a food startup with his partner Aarti Sirsat Kulkarni.

It is the house of India's first branded golgappa knows as Gapagap and its signature product. Though Pani Puri and other street foods is favorite across India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh (entire Indian sub-continent), it is often frowned upon for the lack of hygiene with which it is often served. Therefore, though popular, and full of medicinal values for the variety of herbs and spices used, it is not considered as a healthy eating option by many. Same is with a variety of other savory snacks that are served across the country by road side hawkers.

Chatar Patar decided to change that by pioneering to serve these hawkers style street food as an organized business. Prepared and served in hygienic conditions, with a variety of exotic choices of flavors, “Gapagap” and the other items on the menu have been highly appreciated both by Chatar Patar’s guests as well as press.

Chatar patar has gone ahead with its innovation with stuffing the golgappa puri with assorted innovative stuffing, making it more interesting. The other items include an assortment of snacks that are authentic hawker style preparations from all across India with emphasis on Indore along with several signature items that are innovated and developed in-house.

Chatar Patar expands its business operations using a franchisee model that is simple to own and operate, with a very small investment. The franchise model is such created that a unit franchisee owner can grow and become Master franchisee on various levels, progressively owning a bigger share of Chatar Patar business.

What motivated you to get into this business?
Since my childhood, I always loved Pani Puri and other street foods. The very smell of it used to bring water to my mouth. I believe it had been same with you. But, my mother hardly allowed me to eat it. She loved me too much to let me to fall sick. So she will prepare most of these things at home. During my tenure with Infosys group, I suffered from severe food poisoning after eating road side Pani Puri. For me it was blessing in disguise, I thought to do something about it. I researched for almost two years before launching “chatar Patar”. My research shows that the pani puri has the biggest market then any street food in terms of numbers, but for big Giants this was insignificant for their time. So they dint paid any attention to Pani Puri and that’s where we came into the picture to change it in the organized business.

How has the concept of retail franchising evolved over the years?
I was reading somewhere that the retail industry changes every three year, but when we talk about food industry, it changes every year, new concepts are coming and doing good. As I feel it, copying the concept from the other countries is good but they have to customize according to India. We at chatar patar foods Pvt ltd ,takes care of the extensive research and market testing to ensure that the food is matching with the change in taste and growing competition. This gives the franchisee an edge over the self operated stores. People are more interested in taking the franchisee to focus on the operations and strategic decisions may be taken by the parent company.

How has franchising helped your brand in expanding its reach?
Our product deserves a bigger market than a single store or single city operations. We want to take this globally. Franchise route is the fastest way to reach to the people which deserves as better Pani Puri (gapagap). We are looking for the passionate people to join hands with the fastest growing network of Pani Puri brand.

Selecting a right partner on board is not an easy task. So, what criteria you follow franchisee selection?
Passion is the key that will keep you going. See Pani Puri in India is looked down as a business. You don’t have to be very educated to do this, and certainly you don’t require an MBA to do it. People would say many things to deviate you from the work but if you are passionate enough, you would listen to everything with a smile. This is my humble business opportunity for somebody with low investment but bigger dreams. There are various people who wants to do something of their own but don’t know where to start. We are not looking for huge money; we are looking for passion to do something crazy and different. Business is fun at chatar patar.

Shed some light on your USP
The basic problem every food outlet suffers is dependability on the trained staff. We have standardized everything in order to serve the same thing everywhere without being dependent on the staff. All our Bhels and gapagaps (Pani Puri) comes in the single packet serving so that the dish that is being served would taste the same in all the stores across India. Our concept is unique in a way that nobody tries to standardize the street food. We also have a concept of cross street food festival where in store in Maharashtra would taste the food from streets of Kolkata. So our franchise doesn’t have to invest in the traveling or standardization. From parent company to franchisee everybody strives to innovation, this is our USP.

What according to you is the scope for aspiring franchisees in this business? Is the future bright in the years to come?
I would say franchisee route is the safest route and is being accepted by everyone now. People would not want to reinvent in the wheel. Parent company researches and brings innovation to the industry and products. The scale of economies also works in the favor of the franchisee, everything from marketing tools to the raw materials everything get to the store at the best possible rates. The system once gets approved in a single store will get duplicated in the entire system.

Franchising is the future; everything from food to automobiles to car cleaning to laptops everything is getting franchised. This will get all the businesses organized and best part is people are ready to accept new concepts.

Which cities are you tapping for expansion?
Once the concept has been proven, we are not only looking for stores across India but we are getting Chatar Patar abroad. We are looking for opening our stores in all part of the country. Currently we have our stores in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tripura and Assam. West Bengal & Rajasthan would be added soon in the list.

We have received various inquires from Dubai, Tehran, Nigeria, London etc. We are studying the market and would want to put our best foot forward. Retailers need to continuously evolve and develop. The Chatar Patar menu is a combination of classic favorites and innovation. It recreates the magic of street food, while keeping it safe and hygienic. All the menu items are introduced after extensive food tasting and market testing. The products are highly standardized and can be easily made using Chatar Patar's pre-mixes with little training. It may please be noted that since the birth place of Chatar Patar is Indore, the menu has a strong Indori influence, and that is our USP which we fiercely protect. Chatar Patar uses a differential pricing system of based on the costs for operating in different market segments.

As your brand is very niche in retail industry, what trends/ strategies your brand is following for its franchise development?
We just have to get people aware about our brand and the concept; people are getting attracted towards the business opportunity of the most eaten food “Pani Puri” (Street Food). We make use of SEO to make them aware about us.

Traction Details and Recent Activity
• Major growth drivers: Taste and standardization of food
• Investment for opening your brand’s franchise: 2.5 lakhs to 10 lakhs (unit franchisee)
• Area: 25 sq feet to 550 sq feet.
• Breakeven: First month onwards
• Return-on-investment (RoI in percentage): 60%
• Preferred location: Malls, High foot fall area
• No. of outlets operational (company-owned & franchised): 11