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Daybreak · Yesterday · 16 min

Casual dining doesn't scale like fast food. Bharti is betting on Olive Garden anyway

On a hot Thursday evening in Delhi, people are queuing outside India's first Olive Garden. Some found it on Instagram. Others wandered over from the business park next door. Almost all have waited at least half an hour. Bharti Group wants 10 Olive Gardens in three years, and 125 total restaurants — more than double what it runs today. Indians are dining out more than ever, and serious money is following. But the most successful restaurants in India have deliberately stayed small. The ones that tried to scale mostly didn't. And Bharti's confidence rests entirely on a simple observation: that Indians are dining out more than they ever were. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

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On a hot Thursday evening in Delhi, people are queuing outside India's first Olive Garden. Some found it on Instagram. Others wandered over from the business park next door. Almost all have waited at least half an hour.

Bharti Group wants 10 Olive Gardens in three years, and 125 total restaurants — more than double what it runs today. Indians are dining out more than ever, and serious money is following.

But the most successful restaurants in India have deliberately stayed small. The ones that tried to scale mostly didn't. And Bharti's confidence rests entirely on a simple observation: that Indians are dining out more than they ever were.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

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