Why Rameshwaram is growing big 🤯
And what internet businesses can learn from it 🙏🏼
Welcome to the 60th edition of the GrowthX Newsletter. Every Tuesday & Thursday I write a piece on startups & business growth. Today’s piece is going to 94,400+ operators & leaders from startups like Google, Stripe, Swiggy, Razorpay, CRED & more
South indian restaurants are flooding Bengaluru 🍛
Myth : No new restaurant can become huge 🤭
Fact : Rameshwaram is a brand in making it huge 💰
Here’s a story of how a south indian eatery is destroying all misconceptions of red ocean business categories. So many lessons for tech businesses to learn from it.
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Let’s get to the Rameshwaram story 🗓
I am going to make a confession. It was Feb 2022 & I had moved back to Bengaluru. Natural choice of picking a place to live was Indiranagar. The place I had spent almost 3 years before Covid. This made me look at eateries around this locality andRameshwaram popped up.
The insane word of mouth ✨
If you have friends in Bengaluru, they will talk about Rameshwaram as one of the best places to try south indian food. What the h*ll is going on?
Short answer → Keep the users hooked.
Long answer 👇👇👇
Some important business lessons ⬇️
First, deeper market research 🎯
The Rameshwaram owners have spent a lot of time understanding the market gap. Bangalore has great south India restaurants. But, that does not mean each area will have a great south india restaurant. Indiranagar is one such area.
You will find many hybrid (south+north) restaurants here but almost no good south indian focused restaurant.
Second, picking the right micro-geo 🤯
Rameshwaram picked a lesson from the McDonald's playbook & tweaked it for Indiranagar. picking commercial places which have insane footfall, the audience has appetite to pay a premium price for south Indian food.
Rameshwaram is on 12th main Indiranagar - Tell me a better location?
Third, super short menu 📝
With only 6 odd dish in the menu, Rameshwaram is nailing less is more - the south indian way.Idli - Dosa - KharaBath's variation with ghee, top it up with great chai & filter coffee. This ensures the chef can focus on quality than solving for making 100s of dishes in a standard eatery.
The higher than average price point ensures audience filtering too.
Fourth, consistency 🔁
You go to Rameshwaram on any day of the year and you will get the exact same portion/ quality / taste / experience. From better POS machines to standardised cutlery to faster moving service executives. It just works like clockwork.
Podi idli in JP nagar vs Indiranagar branch is legit a replica in taste, serving method, and the whole experience every freaking time.
Fifth, dead focused on walk-ins 🙏🏼
Rameshwaram does not delivery on Swiggy/Zomato. Creating insane walk-in pool of local residents. This is interesting considering major eateries now rely heavily on online food ordering apps. 100% of the efforts go into making walk-ins experience better.
No wonder there is insane crowd any time you go to Rameshwaram.
But importantly 🧠
Rameshwaram wants to be the pop culture for morning breakfast.
From YouTube stars to the CultFit janata in Indiranagar, it attracts groups of people than individual walk-ins, something that's unique to them. Hope this added value to your thought process.Want to learn growth by doing? Check out the rabbit hole.