The Culinary Conundrum

Apart from Gandhi, multiculturalism, politics and yoga, India is known for its quintessential epicurean pulse. In the past few years, the Indian food industry has risen to a global platform with Michelin stars being awarded to the Indian chefs. While walking down a street, a lane, a marg or chowk, one cannot miss the booming food stalls and franchises of multi-million dollar companies. Some four decades ago, R.S. Enterprise forayed into contemporary Indian cuisine with “The Silver Spoon”. Today, “The Silver Spoon” has become the It factor amongst Delhi’s millennials. R.S. Enterprise has a team of 25 F&B managers, with 5 supervising heads led by the CEO, Mr Bhagat. These heads report directly to the CEO. In turn, the F&B managers report to the supervising heads. The business has been steadily growing with the number of restaurants rising from 15 to 20 in the past year. The increase in business has been very satisfying as the demand for newer culinary experience increased. The Head Chef of the F&B department has been busy cooking up exciting new dishes almost every other month. Things have been going well till the head of the accounts department, Mr Mishra sought Mr Bhagat’s approval for hiring 2 assistants. Mr Bhagat didn’t like to disagree, but he just wanted to check if things were in control! Lately, he had been receiving complaints from the supervising heads about delays in reimbursement of expenses. Also, he had to personally review many expense vouchers that Mr Mishra couldn’t verify. Mr Mishra shared that the submission of expenses incurred from grocery, labour, kitchen operations, occupancy and others with proper documentation by the F&B managers was neither timely nor systematic. A few times it had also crossed the limits and needed extra scrutiny. So he had to dedicate a lot of time on collecting the details and even then ended up with incomplete data. Vouchers without relevant data were not verified by him and had to be approved by the CEO. That further added to the delay and wasted top management time too. These engagements pushed back the fund release decisions too, which, in turn affected the day-to-day operations. Hence, the billing cycles were getting elongated which was hitting the cash flow. The revelation was deeply disturbing to Mr Bhagat, and he found a real threat in it. Mr Bhagat wanted to keep track of the cash flow. He needed for smooth operations within the organization. Mr Mishra wanted to save his time as well as the CEO’s and do more constructive work. At the ground level, the F&B managers wanted an easy way to record and update expenses and relative evidence on a real-time platform. None of them wanted unnecessary claims just because of lax provided by preset limits. Neither did they want to stop expenses if they were crucial, but beyond limits. Mr Bhagat wished for a solution to all this concern. A unique customer for KarmaAxis.