As food FOMO takes over Bangalore, snagging a table at the hottest restaurants needs strategy. Here is what city foodies are doing to dine out at their favourite place
While law student Ananya was at home in Bangalore during her break from college in Delhi, she spent every Monday evening waiting for booking slots for Naru Noodle Bar to open at 8 pm. After weeks of failed attempts to secure a place at the 20-seater ramen bar, she commanded friends and family to take a stab as well. She was hoping to up the chances of tasting that elusive ramen. However, all of them got a ‘no slots available’ message. Disappointed, Ananya is now waiting for her next trip to Bangalore to go through the process all over again.
The predicament of scores of other such eager-disappointed diners resonated with creative director, copy writer and popular content creator Pranav Mathur, inspiring him to make a reel for Instagram that sent up this ‘scarcity’ in a lighter vein. It received significant traction and was widely shared.
Pranav makes a call to his fictional partner, Ramesh, telling him that he wants to open a restaurant to which he doesn’t want people to come. “I mean I want them to come, but not just like that… I have learnt a lot from booking train tickets on the IRCTC website. I want to give the same experience to people who want to eat at my restaurant.” In the comments section, one follower said, “The IRCTC booking reference gave me PTSD, man.”
The FOMO factor
Besides Naru Noodle Bar, Pizza 4 P’s, the Vietnam-based Japanese pizza brand, Malay restaurant Kopitiam Lah and Wine in Progress, the downtown wine bar, have all earned the reputation of being hard to enter without multiple attempts to book a slot. The idea of making a booking difficult to get works in favour of restaurants, according to PR professional Nisha Matthew, who works with F&B brands.
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“It’s a strategy that is only effective in Bangalore where people are driven to follow the hype and love the idea of having to work for what is essentially a leisure activity. You cannot miss the irony.” Not every new restaurant can pull it off, she adds. “There’s a science to it. The product has to be excellent, and the pricing needs to be at a sweet spot. Else, you can attempt to create FOMO, but few people will fall for the ploy,” she says.
Pranav Mathur hastens to add that he isn’t dissing restaurants. He says he’s had good experiences at several of the restaurants he’s alluding to, but you can’t deny that there’s an element of the ridiculous about making a restaurant table so hard to get. “There’s really no need to be playing fastest finger first. It can be very exhausting for people,” he says.
“In Mumbai, where real estate space comes at a higher premium than in Bangalore, you can still walk into the best restaurants. If there are no tables, they’ll tell you what the waiting time is, you go around the block, maybe window-shop and then come and eat. It’s the old way and it works,” adds Mathur.
Walk in and dine
Kopitiam Lah, run by the husband-wife team Vinesh Johny and Joonie Tan, also started by insisting on pre-bookings in the initial days when crowds surged. It was both good and bad. It allowed the restaurant to manage operations better but also created the perception that it was hard to get a table here. “There were people saying they hadn’t eaten at Kopitiam Lah because of the impossibility of getting in,” says Chef Vinesh Johny. “Where was that coming from?” It prompted Joonie to appear in an Instagram post explaining that they did not want to be inaccessible and now have a certain number of seats set aside for walk-in customers.
This is something Wine in Progress (WIP) has introduced as well after initially having a pre-booking only policy. “This was necessary as we are a tiny bar with just 14 seats,” explains Akhila Srinivas, owner. “We did not want to disappoint people or turn them away. There’s only so much time people will wait and there’s a point at which it becomes unpleasant and the experience is ruined even before they take a seat.”
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With pre-booking for specific time slots, expectations are clearly set and one of the biggest challenges for anyone in the F&B business — no matter the size of the space — is sorted, she explains, and the possibilities of poor experiences are minimised. More recently, WIP has put out some tables away from the bar counter and these are for walk-in customers. “As a customer, I can feel the fatigue of having to book slots long before you set out to have a few glasses of wine and something to eat. We absolutely don’t want to over-programme and are trying to accommodate as many people as possible,” Akhila says.
Letting the hype to settle
Walking in or making a reservation shortly before drinks or a meal is the only way some customers are willing to do it. Digital marketing strategist Sindu says, “I’m an ardent foodie and always keen to go and check out a new place whenever I hear good things about it. But having to fight for my place at every figurative table, I don’t want to go through all that hassle. Going out to eat or drink should be a leisurely pursuit, not one that causes anxiety.”
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But as someone who works with various brands, she understands the benefits of creating a certain exclusivity for a restaurant or bar. “A destination where it’s near impossible to get a seat without multiple attempts acquires a certain cachet and it becomes an aspiration. Those who do manage to experience these places get bragging rights and they will certainly brag on social media. No brand or business would say no to that,” she says.
F&B consultant and enthusiastic foodie Pradeep Bali thinks nothing of travelling great distances for a good meal. “But I simply refuse to sit in front of a screen at a particular time of the week trying to book a slot,” he says. “I knew Pizza 4 Ps was getting rave reviews. But booking a week ahead wasn’t my thing. I waited for the hype to settle and just walked in the other day. I got a table and had a wonderful meal. If you set the FOMO aside, you can eat where you want without all the accompanying stress,” he says.
