Jaldrajan consultants, a Chennai based firm is developing innovative ways to increase the turnover of their clients, 90% of whom are Udipi or South Indian fast food restaurant owners. Jaldrajan Jadapkrishnan Iyer, CEO of Jaldrajan consultants says, "Udipi owners have traditionally been impatient with slow eaters at their restaurants. Our market research indicates that 8/10 Udipis in Southern and Western India are looking for innovative ways to kick the existing customers out as quickly as possible. We have provided our own patented formula of employing non-waiters for our clients."
Traditional waiters who take the order will now be accompanied by non-waiters. If you wondered how having your last bite of idli automatically made the plate below disappear, it was the work of an impatient waiter circling like a vulture around your table. Waiters in these South Indian fast food joints are generally trained to clear your table and hand you the bill as soon as you even think about having your last piece of Dosa, Idli, Mendu Vada, etc. They are even trained to make a dirty face and discourage you from ordering the next dish or if you take too long to decide. The age-old concept of these joints is to make the customer feel guilty of having more food than they'd like him to eat.
Jaldrajan consultants have gone ahead and created the concept of a non-waiter. A non-waiter simply means a person who cannot wait. This new breed of restaurant workers will now not even let you savour your last bite. They will be professionally trained to be emotionally unattached to the customer and will come equipped with timers. As soon as the waiter serves a dish to a customer, a non-waiter will start the timer. When the time runs out, irrespective of whether the food in the plate has been completely eaten, a non-waiter will swoop in and snatch the plate away. Also, in case the customer takes more than 15 seconds to decide on the next dish he'd like to eat, he is handed over the tab.
Mr. Iyer is working with leading Udipi owners to create standard time limits for various dishes. A major issue that Mr. Iyer is working on improving is the time lag. "We are working on decreasing the time lag between the moment at which the customer's time runs out to the moment at which the non-waiter swoops in.The current average time lag is 600 milliseconds and that can be brought down to 450 milliseconds with better training", he says.
Sources tell us that the Udipi owners are getting impatient as Jaldrajan Iyer is yet to come out with a prototype of a typical non-waiter. Manjunath Ramanathan, a disgruntled Udipi customer gloats when he says, "This Jaldrajan fellow should experience first-hand the impatience of these Udipi owners. 5 years back, I was escorted out of an Udipi in Tiruchipelli for taking more than 45 seconds for deciding between Dahi Wada or Coconut Barfi for dessert."
However, major corporate giants have welcomed the move to employ non-waiters. Mr. Tej Bechain, CEO of Fast Forward Ltd is planning on hiring Udipi owners to run the canteens of all the offices. "We'll have employees whose lunch breaks are timed. What more could an uptight, nitpicky boss like me ask for?".
Inspite of Udipi owners standing on his head when we interviewed him, Jaldrajan Iyer is confident that he'll come out with a prototype soon and the amount spent on non-waiters will soon compensate for the revenue earnt through a quicker turnover.
