Tag: coffee

Coffee, sugar and cream

A couple of weeks back, my wife and I had a long discussion on the operations of the coffee counter at Maiya’s in Jayanagar. It was an interesting discussion since while I was extremely familiar with the operations there (having gone there almost every other day for the last year), the wife was seeing them for the first time.

My hypothesis was that it was the structure of the coffee+tiffin combo and not accounting for multiple orders in one ticket that caused the congestion. The wife’s diagnosis was rather different – she recognised the sugar counter as the bottleneck.

Most South Indian restaurants have ready two kinds of boiling milk – one with sugar and one without, and your choice of milk (or a linear combination) can be added to decoction to make coffee of the required sweetness for you. Maiya’s does it differently. They only have unsweetened milk, and you need to add the sugar yourself.

So there is sugar placed in a bowl beyond the coffee counter where you add the sugar, get yourself a spoon (inconveniently placed before the coffee counter which means you stretch across) and go on while stirring the coffee. For non-regular customers (my untested hypothesis is that most Maiya’s customers are regulars), this is a novelty and leads to inefficiency of the full queue.

The wife argued that if Maiya’s were to keep both sweetened and unsweetened milk (like other restaurants), sugar could come pre-mixed in the coffee and the bottleneck could be eliminated. Since the barista doesn’t multitask (he fills exactly one cup at a time), there is no problem in miscommunication, etc.

The problem is that turnover of the unsweetened milk in other establishments is not high enough to maintain quality. The thing with the milk is that it needs to be constantly stirred, or at least poured from, for cream to not form in it (such cream can make the coffee gross). When the demand for a particular kind of milk (usually unsweetened) is low, it is not stirred enough, and cream forms. And then when you ask for coffee without sugar (or “less sugar” – remember linear combinations of the milks are possible) you end up with cream in your coffee.

This happened to me twice in the last three days. On Saturday I was having coffee at Hatti (opposite Maiya’s), asked for “strong, less sugar”, which meant I got some of the unsweetened milk, which means there was cream in my coffee. I had to spit out some to make it palatable. And the story repeated itself at the Vasudev Adigas in Jayanagar 8th Block on Sunday. Nice tasting coffee made gross by the cream.

It is to solve this problem that Maiya’s perhaps has only one kind of milk – it is constantly boiling away and being poured from, and there is no cream. And you get superior quality coffee. For which I’m willing to pay a premium.

Coffee Pricing Dynamics

I had alluded to this coffee price war once before, but I believe it deserves fuller treatment, hence this other post. This is to do with the two coffee shops facing each other at the concurrence of 7th Main, 30th Cross and the “Diagonal Road” in Jayanagar – Maiya’s and Hatti Kaapi.

So Maiya’s opened for business sometime in 2008-09 (this was the period I was out of Bangalore, and it was there by the time I returned). On the ground floor, one the side, they opened a counter where they sold coffee. It was an efficient operation – you line up, buy the token and then move over to a window where you get unsweetened coffee in a ceramic cup, to which you add sugar as per requirement and move on. The coffee was generally excellent and pricing was always premium. In August 2014, when I started patronising it on a regular basis, a cup of coffee cost Rs. 18 and ten minutes of waiting (in line).

A month or two later came Hatti Kaapi, right across the road and facing Maiya’s. Hatti priced their coffee at Rs. 10 per cup, served in a glass tumbler. Sugar was pre-mixed into the milk, though you could ask for your desired level (no sugar, “less sugar” or “normal sugar”), which would be produced as a linear combination of sweetened and unsweetened milk. Hatti Kaapi served snacks also, and presently expanded its line selling cold coffee, juices and the like. Hatti has a larger customer-facing window than Maiya’s so the operations are rather smooth.

While people might have expected Maiya’s to drop their price in view of this newfound competition, they didn’t, though the cost of a cup of coffee for customers came down – from Rs. 18 and 10 minutes of waiting time, it came down to Rs. 18 and 5 minutes of waiting time. While several erstwhile regular customers crossed the road to the cheaper Hatti, based on anecdata (length of queue every time I go for a coffee, which is about once a day), it is unlikely that Maiya’s lost customers. The presence of two quality coffee shops close together possibly expanded the market and all seemed good.

However, it seems like Maiya’s decided that Hatti had got a competitive advantage by way of serving snacks along with their coffee and decided to replicate the strategy (note that Maiya’s has a full service restaurant upstairs, but this is about the “quick-coffee-and-snacks” market). So they started giving combo offers, where you would get a hot fried snack (choice of bajji, bOnDa, samosa and the likes) with coffee for Rs. 25. The snack would be served out of the same tiny window that served coffee, on paper plates with plastic spoons.

I must confess I’ve never purchased the combo (despite the attractive pricing; the snacks don’t look attractive enough to me), but I’m not sure about the impact that it’s been having on Maiya’s overall sales. I go back to anecdata (for I have no other data; and in my defence I have a large number of data points), and it seems like the average queue length at my arrival has remained the same from the time before Maiya’s started serving snacks (and after Hatti opened). However, I find that the total time taken in queue is now significantly higher – closer to the ten minutes from the time before Hatti’s setting up than the five minutes in the intergennum where Hatti was open but Maiya was not serving snacks.

And from my observations there, this is because the snacks have now messed up Maiya’s operations. Earlier, it was simple and linear. It’s a small passage where the Queue goes in a U-shape (unfortunately I haven’t taken pictures, and can’t find any online). At the base of the U is the cash counter and then you move to the side to get your coffee. A nice linear queue.

Now, snacks are served from the same window as the coffee, and since not everyone buys them, the ordering is broken. Also, it is the same token in which people have to get snacks and coffee at the same time, and that disrupts the queue further. Then, there are people who come back for their coffee later having taken the snacks earlier, and thus go straight to the coffee counter without going to the cash counter, messing up people’s expected wait times and leading to further chaos. In other words, thanks to serving snacks, the service time at Maiya’s has gone up, while the utilisation of the barista has gone down.

Hatti, on the other hand, makes full use of its corner location such that snack service doesn’t disrupt coffee service at all.

So the coffee at Maiya’s has effectively become more expensive again (Rs. 18 and 10 minutes), and with declining utilisation, my sense is that they are making significantly less money from their coffee counter now (including snacks) than they were before they started selling snacks. I really hope they will be able to simplify the operations of their coffee and snacks counters, else they risk losing more customers to Hatti. But then it seems like the snacks have become especially popular with Maiya’s regulars, so undoing the snacks service is also not an option.

Finally, here is a piece by the New Indian Express on this price war. As for me, I still prefer Maiya’s – the difference in quality of coffee does it for me. But if they don’t improve their operations soon enough, I might make the switch across the road.

Coffee pricing at Bangalore airport

I had what I thought was a neat theory on coffee pricing at the Bangalore International Airport. However, on second thoughts, I think the theory is bunk. On third thoughts, however, I think I should publish it, even though I don’t believe it is true. So here goes.

There are two places where you get great filter coffee outside the terminal of the Kempegowda International Airport near Bangalore. At the Western edge, close to the departure gates, there is Maiya’s, which also sells South Indian snacks and food items apart from pre-mixed filter coffee (without sugar). The coffee here is priced at Rs. 30 per cup. At the Eastern edge, close to the arrival gates, there is an outlet of Hatti Kaapi. Now, this outlet has started selling snacks, too, and now sells coffee in cups and pots of various sizes. However, the “basic” filter coffee, which is mixed fresh on the spot (you can choose the level of sweetness, and strength) and is available in a paper cup the same size of that at Maiya’s, is priced at Rs. 15.

The argument I had in mind for this differential pricing was that the clientele of Maiya’s, it being at the departure gate, is mostly passengers on their way to board flights. Given that they can afford to fly, they can afford to pay a premium for good coffee. Hence it is good economics to charge a high price for the coffee. Also, given that departing passengers are usually short on time, it is unlikely that they will pay the additional time cost of walking down to the Hatti Kaapi outlet in order to save the Rs. 15 per cup monetary cost of coffee there.

At the other end, Hatti Kaapi is at the arrival gate, and its major clientele consists of drivers. Given the distance of the airport from Bangalore city, it has become almost unheard of for relatives and friends to go all the way to the airport to pick up people. So people waiting at the arrival gate are mostly drivers. And given that drivers are not particularly rich (not rich on an average as airline travellers at least), they are much more price-sensitive when it comes to their coffee. And so the coffee at this end of the airport is priced at a much more reasonable Rs. 15 per cup. This makes for a nice economic theory, right?

The theory falls apart, however, if you compare the prices at Maiya and Hatti kaapi outlets at the airport to their prices elsewhere in the city. A good parallel is in Jayanagar, where the same two establishments have outlets across the road from each other (intersection of 7th Main and 30th Cross).

The kind of service in the two establishments is similar. You stand in line, take a token and stand in line again to get your cup of coffee. Hatti serves its coffee in a paper cup while Maiya serves in a ceramic cup-and-saucer. Like at the airport, Hatti’s kaapi is mixed on the spot and you can set your sugar level. Unlike at the airport, Maiya also mixes coffee fresh on the spot, but like at the airport no sugar is added and you need to add it yourself. It must be mentioned here that the Maiya in question has been there for several years while the Hatti outlet across the road started only a few months back.

And how do Maiya and Hatti price their coffee in Jayanagar? Maiya is at Rs. 18 per cup, and Hatti at Rs. 10 per cup. So the ratio of prices of a cup of coffee between Maiya and Hatti at the airport (2:1) is not very different from the ratio of prices of a cup of coffee between Maiya and Hatti in the city (1.8:1). So the theory I mentioned above falls flat on its head.

Where the theory stands, perhaps, is in explaining why Maiya and Hatti are located at the airport at the ends where they are located – Maiya being a more premium brand in general captures the passenger crowd at the departure gate, while Hatti being a more price-sensitive brand captures the driver crowd at the arrival gate.

And regarding the coffee itself I’ve had coffee at all four outlets and can confirm that both in the city and the airport, the quality of Maiya’s coffee is much superior to Hatti’s. In fact in Jayanagar, where the two outlets are a 5-minute walk from where I live, I prefer to pay the price and time (the lines at Maiya are generally longer than at Hatti) premium to drink coffee at Maiya rather than to drink the more “reasonably priced” stuff at Hatti.

Where you get coffee and tea

An old cranky professor once joked that “cafeteria” should be pronounced as “coffee tea area”, since it was the area where you got coffee and tea. We had laughed back then, both at the poor joke, and at the poor professor who attempted the poor joke. He was out of his wits as usual, we had assumed.

After my recent trip to Spain, though, I realise that he was not actually joking. “-eria”/”-aria” is a Spanish suffix that indicates a place where the prefix is sold. So a place where they sell Cerveza (beer) is a Cerveceria. A place where they sell Bombon (chocolate) is a Bomboneria. I even saw a “Churreria”, where they sold Churros.

So what is a cafeteria? The Spanish word for coffee is “cafe”. The Spanish word for tea is “te” (pronounced thay or something of that sort). So what would you call a place where you get cafe and te?

Cafeteria, of course! The old cranky professor wasn’t so cranky, after all.

Networking eatings

Given that I’m a freelancer and do several things to earn my money, and that there is no consistency in my income flow, I need to do a lot of “networking”. Essentially, this is about generally catching up with someone over an informal chat, discussing what we do, and exploring if there were any synergies to exploit. I think this is great option value, for meeting people and getting their perspectives makes you think different, and that can give you ideas which you can potentially make money out of at a later point in time.

The point of this post about the venues for such networking meetings. I don’t have an office – I work from home, and my home office is not particularly suited for meetings, so I prefer to do my meetings outside. Sometimes, when the person I’m meeting has an office, we end up doing the meeting there. I’ll leave out those meetings from this discussion, since there is nothing really to be described about the venue. Most other occasions, though, meetings happen over food and drink, more likely the latter. This post is about good and bad places for networking meetings.

Most of my “networking meetings” so far have happened at the trusty old Cafe Coffee Day. The city is littered with several of these outlets, and for the price of two cappuccinos, they offer excellent place to sit and talk for hours together. The problem, though, is that they have now (for a couple of years or so) gone pre-paid. You need to order at the counter before you settle down at a table, and each time you want something more you need to go up and order again. There are two problems this poses.

Firstly, if you reach before the other person (chances of both reaching at the same instant are infinitesimal), you will need to wait. And in the time when you’re occupying a table and haven’t ordered you have to deal with strange glares from the cafe staff. You need to keep telling them “I’m waiting for a friend”. The next problem is with payment dynamics. It is so much easier to split the bill when you’re paying at the table. It gets complicated when you’re paying at the counter, with the effect that more often than not one of you will end up paying for both of you. That’s not exactly a problem, but starting a meeting with discussions on who will pay is not exactly the best way to go.

My initial meetings with the person who has turned out to be my biggest client so far happened in the coffee shop of a five star hotel. I must mention here that in most five star hotels in Bangalore, you get remarkably good filter coffee nowadays. Coffee shops of five star hotels are good places for these meetings, for they are usually quiet and you are served at your desk. They come at a cost, however – though you might argue that paying two hundred rupees for filter coffee at Vivanta is not so much more than paying a hundred rupees for a cappuccino at Cafe Coffee Day.

Breakfast at a five star hotel, however, isn’t that great for networking. Recently, I did a breakfast meeting at a five star hotel. As you might expect, we had the buffet. However, the problem with doing a meeting over a breakfast buffet in a five star hotel is that you simply can’t do justice to the spread! You can’t keep going for refills, and you would want to stick to things you can eat without creating much of a mess. And when you’re doing a professional meeting you don’t want to be eating too much also.

Then there are South Indian restaurants. I’ve done some meetings in those, also. The problem, however, is that such restaurants rely on quick table turnover and even if you go in off-peak times you get strange looks if you stay too long. This has to be mitigated with staggered orders through the course of your meeting. The advantage is that these places are cheap and the food is great.

I don’t usually do networking meetings over drinks. It has nothing to do with my capacity – it is just that most pubs are loud and not particularly conducive for conversation. And you don’t want to be screaming at the top of your voice in a professional meeting. That doesn’t mean I haven’t done meetings in pubs, though, but it’s usually after a certain degree of familiarity has been established.

Finally let us come to the lunch meetings. Here, it is important that you choose a cuisine that is high density. Again you don’t want to spend too much time eating, so you should prefer food that you can eat little of but will still fill you up. Also, you need to choose a cuisine that’s not messy. On both counts, North Indian is NOT ideal – it’s not very high density, and you need to eat with your hands which can become messy and that’s not something you want at a meeting. A further problem is that North Indian food in most restaurants comes in shared portions – and when you’re meeting someone professionally it can get a little uncomfortable.

These problems are there in East Asian also. South Indian restaurants (in Bangalore) are mostly quick service and thus not great for networking lunches (and south indian food is low density). So the ideal choice in this case is European – portions are small, the food is filling, you can eat it all with a knife and fork and it comes in individual portions.

I’ll put more fundaes on this matter as I get more experienced in the matter of networking eatings. I’m off now – need to rush to a lunch meeting!

 

Rice to coffee to programming

I just finished reading Sanjeev Sanyal’s Land of Seven Rivers, a book on the history of India’s geography. In most places it turns into a book on history rather than a book of geography, but has lots of interesting fundaes (using that word since I’m unable to find a perfect synonym in English). It is basically a retelling of Indian history with a focus on how what we currently know as India came to be, and the various expansions and contractions in the country over the years.

This is not a review of the book (unless you consider the preceding paragraph as a review). The purpose of this post is about one interesting concept I found in the book. Sanyal mentions that the traditional name for Java (the Indonesian island which houses Djakarta, among others) is “yavadwipa”. Now, while online dictionaries that I just consulted say that “yava” is the Sanskrit word for “barley” or “barleycorn”, the only other time I’ve come across the word has been while performing my parents’ death ceremonies – where the priest chants something to the effect of “offer yava” and then asks you to take some rice in your hand and wash it off with a spoonful of water. It is possible, though, that “yava” simply means “grain” and can refer to any kind of grain, including rice and barley.

Earlier in the book, Sanyal mentions that while wheat and barley originated in the fertile crescent (in and around modern Iraq), where they were first cultivated, rice has an eastern origin. Rice, he mentions, was probably first cultivated in South East Asia and came to India from the east. Taking this in conjunction with the fact that the Sanskrit name for Java is yavadwipa, can we posit that it meant “island of rice”? It may not be that rice originated in Java, but it is fully possible that Ancient and Medieval India imported rice from Java, thanks to which the island got its name.

So over the years “yavadwipa” became simply “yava” which I posit that the Dutch wrote as “Java” (considering that in most of continental Europe J is pronounced as Y), which gives the island its current name. What makes this nomenclature more interesting is that Java is now a major producer of coffee, and if you go by Wikipedia, some Americans refer to all coffee as “java”. It is interesting how the same island which was known for a particular kind of food in the ancient and middle ages is now known for another name of food!

Maybe I should start a brand called “rice coffee”.

MLTR

This has nothing to do with any pop group, or any Michael or anyone learning to rock. It’s about this awesome easy-to-miss long undiscovered eatery in Gandhi Bazaar. You should definitely eat at Mahalakshmi Tiffin Room.

Situated on DVG road between Gandhi Bazaar main road and North Road it’s an old-style sit down restaurants. Small marble-topped tables with benches. Communal seating where strangers can share your table. An ancient cupboard displaying “cool drinks”. Blue walls. Waiters in dhotis. A small section cordoned off with the sign “families only”.

And divine food. Really awesome masala dosa (real masala dosa, not the species served at Vidyarthi Bhavan). Soft and oil-free khali dosas (yeah the restaurant is so old; they call it khali dosa and not set dosa). And strong coffee. And all served quicker than you could look around and take stock of the place.

I had been walking past the place for several years but it was only when Priyanka noticed it when we walked past it last April that I actually ate there. We had shared a masala dosa and a coffee then. And were so impressed that we left a 33% tip.

And it so happened that the same waiter Raju was there when we went last weekend. Again quick and efficient service. Awesome dosas. I think they make to stock the khali dosas – for they arrived within half a minute of our ordering.

Oh, and they have a weekly off on Saturdays.

FabIndia Koramangala

There are very few clothing stores that I can say I’m in love with. There are very few stores where I feel like buying a large proportion of merchandise on display whenever I visit it. There are very few stores where just the atmosphere makes you buy much more than you had planned to. And it’s a pity that on two of my visits to the store, I bought nothing.

I haven’t been to too many FabIndia stores outside Bangalore (only a handful of stores in Gurgaon and maybe one in Delhi) but having shopped a few times at the FabIndia store in Koramangala, I feel distinctly underwhelmed whenever i go to any other outlet. Having been several times to this beautifully designed house, I find FabIndia outlets housed in less spectacular buildings sad. Of course there have been times (including two days ago) when I’ve shopped at other outlets but the experience simply doesn’t come close.

The first time I went to the store was some four or five years back when Anuroop wanted to check out kurtas. I think we went there on Bunty’s recommendation but I remember that I hadn’t bought anything. I had quickly made amends for it a couple of months later when I bought a couple of shirts, and then a year later when I bought a dozen shirts at one go!

The only other time I went there without purchasing anything was yesterday morning, when I was visiting the store after a gap of some two or three years. The first thought was one of guilt – of having shopped in a less spectacular Fabindia store (the one at Kathriguppe) just the previous night, and then as I got over it I got overwhelmed with the variety on display. I suddenly got afraid that I might over-spend and made a dash for the exit.

I wasn’t gone for too long, though, as I returned in the evening with Priyanka, and this time we discovered something even more spectacular – something that I had completely missed during my hajaar earlier visits – the store cafe. The brownie was decent, and the coffee was just about ok, but that didn’t matter one bit. Once again, it was the atmosphere at play, and that the coffee shop had in plenty.

It’s something like a small arena. If you can perform some visual art (say a play or a dance) in a five feet square area, this is just the place for you! All around the 5×5 “well” (which is full of pebbles) are stone benches, at different levels. Cushions have been placed on some arbitrary benches, and we understood that that’s where it was supposed to sit. There wsa some music that I didn’t quite recognized but was quite pleasant, and the wooden trays in which the waiter brought our coffees were also beautiful – I might have bought something like that from the store had I been in a spendthrift mood yesterday!

If you are in Bangalore and are interested in cotton clothes you should definitely check out this store sometime. It’s in Koramangala, in the extension of the intermediate ring road. Make sure you go there leisurely, for there is plenty to see and buy (the inventory is about six times as much as that of an “ordinary” FabIndia store). And while you are there, do visit the cafe and lounge around there for a while. And think about Priyanka and me while you are there.

The Switch

Cafe Coffee Day is among the most unromantic places to go on a first date, or so they say. But then you need to understand that the venue can do only so much when it comes to creating the right “atmosphere” for the date. So if you think you are yourselves capable enough of doing a good job of creating a good “atmosphere”, you don’t need to bother about trivialties such as how “romantic” a place is or how good it is in creating “atmosphere” and just pick a place that makes practical sense.

There has been so much of One Day International cricket of late that it is difficult to keep track of various series and tournaments. One tournament that similarly got lost, mostly because the ultimate result was unremarkable (Australia won yet again) was the Champions Trophy, which happened (I think) in South Africa. I don’t remember much of the tournament; I don’t think I watched much of it. All I remember was that there was a game where India played Australia, and that Australia batted first.

Seating arrangement plays an important factor on a first date. Optimal seating arrangement ensures the optimal arrangement of eye contact. Sitting beside each other means you need to put too much effort to establish eye contact, and that is way too much energy. Sitting opposite each other can lead to overexposure – if things aren’t going that well, it’s tough to keep looking into each other’s eyes and that can lead ot awkward moments. It might be interesting to do some academic research in this matter but my hunch is that for a first date a ninety-degree seating arrangement is optimal.

For a few months now I have been on a diet. It has not been without results – my weight has come down by almost a fourth in the last six months. I haven’t done anything drastic, just a set of simple principles. And one of them is “no sugar in coffee”. I’ve given up on tea altogether since I can’t have it without sugar. When you are on a date, however, it is not nice to show off that you are on a diet, especially if you are a guy. it doesn’t give a good picture. So a good strategy is to order something like espresso, which you can claim tastes best without sugar!

I think it was an appeal for LBW that triggered it, but I’m not sure. I do remember, however, that it was a strong appeal that was turned down, but I don’t remember the nature of dismissal. Ashish Nehra was bowling if I’m not wrong. I have no clue who was batting. Maybe it was Haddin, or was it Paine who was opening in that tournament? Not that it matters.

Onlookers might have thought that the move was choreographed given how well we executed it. I don’t even remember their being too much eye contact as it happened. I don’t remember there being any conversation about it as it happened. All I remember is that one moment I was being distracted by Ashish Nehra’s appeal, and the next I was sitting with my back to the TV, comfortably settled where she had been settled a moment earlier, with her having taken my original place.

And I remember that our coffees had also exchanged places along with us!