Vanity, Volume, or Vision: The Real Divide in India’s F&B Scene
Forget chefs and menus. In India’s restaurant industry, it is the owners who decide who survives.
Thirty thousand feet in the air, with a glass of champagne in hand, I stumbled upon Nonna’s on Etihad’s inflight selection. Two hours later, somewhere between the pasta and my tears, I was reminded of why food matters. It is not just sustenance. It is memory, love, a way to make someone whole.
But in India’s food business, love is often an afterthought. Talent is abundant. Taste, too. What is missing is honesty. Strip away the glossy Instagram feeds and buzzy launches, and the industry starts to look very different. Most restaurant owners, in my experience, fall into four buckets.
The Visionaries
These are the ones who get it right. Driven by passion but grounded in profitability, they respect both the craft and the numbers. They know food is culture, not content, but they also know how to keep the books clean. They surround themselves with chefs, bartenders, and operators who share their ethos. They inspire loyalty not because they preach “family” but because they practise fairness. Visionaries are rare, but they are the ones who build legacies.
The Pretenders
Some restaurants are less about food and more about the “front” I sometimes call them laundromats, if you know what I mean. For these owners, the business is a convenient cover for other priorities. Do I judge? Not really. Capitalism has many faces. But the problem begins when they hide behind the language of passion. Do not call it a love letter to cuisine when it is really a ledger entry. Be honest with your partners and teams, because when push comes to shove, façades crumble.
The Profit Makers
These are the scale at all costs entrepreneurs. Their love language is volume: expansion, growth, replication. Done right, it can be powerful. Pizza Bakery is a prime example of scaling a concept with integrity. Globally, Shake Shack began the same way: a single hot dog cart that became a multibillion dollar chain by staying consistent.
Done wrong, though, it is mediocrity on tap. And India has plenty of it. The National Restaurant Association of India estimates that over 40 percent of restaurants shut down within their first year. Not because the food is bad, but because ownership priorities are confused. There is nothing inherently wrong with chasing margins. Just do not sell arithmetic as artistry.
The Vanity Investors
Perhaps the most visible group, they want bragging rights more than balance sheets. A buzzy cocktail bar here, a waterfall in a microbrewery there, because it looks glamorous on Instagram. The reality? The ROI is laughable. Even as the Indian restaurant industry swelled to ₹4.2 lakh crore in 2023, the average return on investment hovers under 10 percent annually, far lower than real estate or even conservative SIPs. Unless they evolve into Visionaries, vanity investors are simply playing dress up with other people’s sweat.
The Real Divide
Here is the uncomfortable truth. All four archetypes exist, and not all are doomed. Visionaries build legacies. Profit Makers can succeed if they are honest. Even Pretenders, if transparent, can find the right teams to manage the balancing act. Vanity Investors? Unless they learn, they are just another cautionary tale.
So the real divide is not between passion and profitability. It is between honesty and pretence. If you are clear about why you are in the business, you will attract the right kind of people to build with you. If you pretend, you will collapse. And when that happens, it will not be the owners who pay the price. It will be the chefs, bartenders, servers, and marketers who believed in them.
Nonna’s reminded me that food is love. But in India’s F&B, love alone is not enough. We need owners with both soul and spine. Visionaries who understand that the real secret ingredient is not passion, vanity, or volume. It is honesty.
Image credit: Netflix