A casual chat over some hot cups of tea and snacks turned friends Aditya Ladsaria and Anirudh Poddar into business partners. Their brainchild, Chai Break, has been serving the city since 2010 with its diverse range of delectables and tea. A soft-spoken Aditya who is more a coffee-tea person, unlike Anirudh, a self-confessed party animal, tells us, “We have been friends since school and though we went to different colleges our friend circle was the same. Hence, we ended up meeting every day discussing everything under the sun. The idea of opening a good coffee shop, with some focus on food as well, struck during one such conversation and resulted in Chai Break”.
Besides the 17 outlets of Chai Break, the duo, egged by their lounge bar Truly Publik’s success in Jamshedpur, launched the classy lounge bar that serves a wide array of community cocktails and siders in the heart of Kolkata just after the lockdown was lifted. “We were thinking of lockdown as an opportunity. Though the market was shrinking with many outlets shutting shop, it seemed the right opportunity to launch a new brand and gain traction,” tells Aditya.
During the lockdown, the duo took advantage of their existing kitchens and ventured into the cloud kitchen segment with Bowl Break. Anirudh says, “Bowl Break, the takeaway option, was there in our future plans but the pandemic preponed it”, adding, “It’s just one of the concepts we have in mind and we intend to add multiple brands in the cloud kitchen space. One must be omnipresent both online and offline to make business shockproof ”.
Chai Break values its customers. Elaborating on the same, Aditya says, “The pandemic taught us that brand loyalty is of utmost importance. Chai Break has had a strong loyal customer base. In fact, 70 per cent of our sales are from regular customers. Post-lockdown we have got 80 per cent of our sales back. Apart from new ones, our regulars too are back.”
From Chai Break to Bowl Break and now Truly Publik, they are charting their journey with a lot of plan and hard work and they intend to continue doing so. Their next plan is to come up with a pizza brand very soon