The Importance Of Marketing

Both the ISO auditors are keen on, and very knowledgeable about, Indian food. Being foodies ourselves, we were joking with them about the best biriyani in the world being made in Bangalore - even after taking into account Delhi, Karachi and Hyderabad. (Let the flame cookout wars begin!)

Anyway - come lunch time, and we decided to drive down to a South-Indian restaurant in Serangoon Road. Anyone who has been to Serangoon Road knows how the aromas of each restaurant on the street loudly proclaim the goodies obtainable inside. We stood outside the restaurant we had chosen, waiting for admittance behind a crowd of people, when we spied a place that billed itself as a Hyderabadi Biriyani house, and walked over.

While all the places around it were buzzing and overflowing with the lunch crowd, this place was empty.

Empty! In Singapore! This is a place where a hawker can viably sell food at 2 AM, on a Thursday morning, in Tampines, in the rain! We were stunned, but since Peter had eaten there before and vouched for the food, we went in and sat down anyway.

The service was predictably good - we were the only customers there after all. The food arrived on time and there was a rude plenty of it. It even tasted fantastic - probably the best Hyderabadi biriyani I've had outside Hyderabad, and definitely better than a good many I've had inside. A thoroughly good time was had by all, and several people in the group were publicly discussing what they were going to order again when they came back!

We were puzzled how an Indian restaurant, in the middle of Little India, with excellent food and decor, could be empty during the lunch crowd when people were queuing up outside the neighbours. Puzzled enough to accost the head waiter and ask him when he brought us the post-prandial tea.

His response stunned us - the owners didn't want to invest in marketing!

Imagine that - you invest in infrastructure, rent a place in the right location, serve a darn fine lunch, impress customers enough to want to come back to you, but don't invest in marketing! One wonders if the owner might have become more 'profitable' by closing down the place, firing the chefs, and selling away his equipment!

That's an interesting lesson for a geek like me - that success in selling something is at least as dependent on marketing as it is on getting the product done right...products don't actually sell themselves all the time!