Extensive Expansion - mm! maroosh!

Impresa Hospitality Management currently owns and manages 17 mm! maroosh outlets in Mumbai and Pune, with extensive expansion plans for the QSR brand chalked out in the next few years.

Till July 2015 we will add 23 outlets, including five in all PVRs in Mumbai. We have signed up with PVR and all these five outlets will be launched soon. We are looking out for other locations as well. After consolidating our position in Mumbai and Pune, we plan to enter Delhi, Bengaluru and Chennai markets, along with tier II cities which have a high aspiration value. This will be followed by a pan Asian expansion after 24 months – Singapore, Hong Kong, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Dubai.

However, the company is not looking at growing through the franchise model and all the outlets will be self-owned. We are simultaneously back-ending our production strongly. Next year when we move out of the city, it will be a copy – paste job.

Currently Impresa Hospitality Management does not have a centralised kitchen and we outsource this part of our operation. We have tie-ups with vendors for this, while we manage the QSRs. The recipes are our own which we give to them under a non-disclosure agreement.  Lebanese cuisine is familiar to the Indian palate and the company's outlets have always been popular from the time the first QSR was launched in 2000. It was the first interactive concept, much before something like Subway came up. You get to eat fresh and see the cooking done before you – that element works very well.

While Shawarmas remain the quintessential favourite, vegetarian options like Hummus and Falafels are increasingly getting popular, along with salads like Fattoush and Tabbouleh. We have introduced Baked Falafel and are concentrating on an interesting vegetarian spread.