Take a deep breath. Your popcorn is safe. When Chennai-based Sathyam Cinemas announced a tie-up with PVR, India’s largest theatre chain with a cash and stock deal valued at over ₹ 850 crore , a surprising number of reactions revolved around it’s popcorn and unique ‘do-it-yourself’ seasoning. Followed closely by paeans to its cold coffee and cream doughnuts.
One fan even did some serious number crunching on Twitter in an intrepid attempt to save his seasoning and “the best popcorn in the world,” saying, “So I did the math. If every Chennaite pays ₹1214, we can buy back #SathyamCinemas ...” In response to the flood of social media protests and questions, CEO of Sathyam Cinema, Kiran Reddy, pinned an open letter on the company’s Twitter handle. It talks about how they started re-imagining Sathyam in 1999, “first the space and technology, then the food and beverage and finally the entire customer experience”. And ends by promising that the core team will continue “to nurture and shape your experiences by preserving everything you love about us — from the people to the food...”
In fact, this may mean the team will be getting even more serious about food, a shift that has already begun with them working on a slew of experimental test kitchens, which soon open across the city.
Already, in the heart of Sathyam’s bustling Royapettah base, there’s a secret room. It is unmarked, fenced by opaque glass and a password protected door lock. Inside, the space is an intriguing blend of museum and lab. There are Andy Warhol prints — vividly coloured bananas and Campbell soup cans — as well as a profusion of charts, Post It reminders and candy coloured tables.
This is Sathyam’s food lab. While the theatre is known for taking food seriously, from hiring French chef Mickaël Besse for its patisserie to creating the popular ID chain of restaurants, the high tech culinary equipment they have been investing in seems at odds with a space that’s expected to churn out mainly popcorn, nachos and cold coffee.
As it turns out, the company, famous for importing popcorn kernels from Nebraska and serving their popcorn with an addictive set of complementary seasoning, created in Chicago, has more ambitious plans. “About five years ago we came to the realisation that we are not just a cinema,” says Bhavesh Shah, Sathyam’s Head of Experience, sitting down between the chefs and Nithin Suresh, the brand’s General Manager for restaurants. He adds, “We see ourselves as three companies in one. We have an F&B team. We are investing in technology. And there’s the theatre. The question we are asking is: What is the future?”
Now, the restaurants come under an independent division, SPI Diners, which is not part of the merger with PVR. This includes their popular brand ID, a contemporary South Indian vegetarian brand set up in 2009, which has seven restaurants as far. It will also include their new project, ‘Open Kitchen.’ (Ecstasy by Mickael Besse and the theatre’s in-house restaurants, on the other hand, do come under the PVR merger.)
Open Kitchen launched a month ago with Envy, a non-vegetarian equivalent to ID, focussing on the South Indian states. The main difference? This kitchen is on the cloud. “We are setting up more cloud kitchens across the city now,” says Bhavesh, adding that the next one will open in Velachery soon. It’s cheaper and easier to test cuisines this way...” (A cloud kitchen accepts orders only through online systems and offers no dine-in option. It consists of just a base kitchen, in this case, the food lab, which then uses Swiggy, Zomato and Uber Eats to deliver food to customers.)
Bhavesh says that cloud kitchens are changing the food scene for both restaurateurs and customers. “You don’t need to spend a crore to set up a restaurant now, then figure out if the food is working. You can be a lot more experimental,” Nithin adds, “We set this up as an R&D kitchen because we wanted to learn how cloud kitchens work. Now we plan to open nine in the city, under the brand Open Kitchen.”
The Sathyam team worked with Chef Harish Rao, formerly with award-winning restaurants Dakshin, and Aavartana at the ITC Grand Chola to create Envy. The first decision they made was quality over quantity, limiting themselves to a small menu. Chef Harish says, “Open kitchens typically tend to have 120 items or so. We serve food from all five states, with just a few items from each State.”
Bhavesh explains that this system develops entrepreneurship, “If a young cook or home chef has a great idea, they can work with us. Or, for example, Director Mysskin has an idea for a restaurant serving some of the 1,000-year-old recipes from his village. He wants to make that food mainstream, and believes he has a winner on his hands. Someone like him doesn’t have time to run a restaurant: but we can do it under Open Kitchen.”
The team plans to turn Envy into a proper brick and mortar restaurant. In the meantime, there’s plenty of cooking at the food lab including a bar in Phoenix MarketCity, which flirts with functional food (think turmeric shots and Ayurvedic potions).
