Fast food chain Jumboking to give Gujarati and Kannada taste buds a tang of the quintessentially Maharashtrian snack
Fast food chain Jumboking to give Gujarati and Kannada taste buds a tang of the quintessentially Maharashtrian snack The vada king:u00a0 Jumboking's MD, Dheeraj Gupta, (above) wants to follow in theu00a0 footsteps of McDonald's. (Left) A Jumboking outlet
No borders are unconquerable for Mumbai's cult street food. After travelling across the seas to the English monarchy, the ubiquitous grab-on-the-go food is now geared to make a debut on the national food menu.
Vada pav, Mumbai's iconic snack, will infiltrate regional borders, after Jumboking Foods, the only branded vada pav chain, decided to open shop in Bangalore, Rajkot and Surat, besides Pune and Aurangabad, and that too, very soon. 
in Charni Road
After MiD DAY reported in April last year about the 'Bombay Burger' selling like hot cakes in London, Jumboking ufffd the seven-odd years old entity catering to Mumbaikars perennially in transit ufffd revealed its plan to launch franchisees in the neighbouring states of Gujarat and Karnataka.
So how does the expansion happen? Think McDonald's, says managing director of Jumboking, Dheeraj Gupta.u00a0
The McD way
"We've already signed up with multiple franchisees in these cities to start at least five stores each to begin with. Since Bangalore and Pune are bigger markets, we intend to sign up more franchisees there. The idea is to take the vada pav all over the country, just as McDonald's has done so successfully," Gupta said.u00a0
The rollout will begin in April this year for the cities of Bangalore, Rajkot and Aurangabad, while franchisees in Pune and Surat will hit the market by June. The company invited more franchisees to sign up with Jumboking. "We will charge an 8 per cent royalty on the sales volumes," Gupta said.
It must be a good business proposition, for why else would a private equity fund quietly purchase a stake in Jumboking, for an undisclosed amount, auguring what could well be an initial public offer (IPO). But Gupta chose to remain close-lipped about the firm investing in the lip-smacking food.
"I can't name the fund because we have signed a non-disclosure agreement with them. We intend to go public only after we have over 300 stores in the country. And, that is only if we need funds for expansion," Gupta said.u00a0u00a0
No compromise
While the company is serious about the bottom line, quality control is no laughing matter either. With a quality-audited centralised master kitchen in Goregaon (see box), Jumboking's cachet, it has precluded the possibility of arbitrary quality and storage of the vada pavs.
"Unless we have a centralised kitchen, it will be difficult to ensure quality and hygiene. Very soon we will outsource transportation and logistics to a company with refrigeration vans, so that we can move to a frozen and semi-cooked model to service our franchisee stores from our Goregaon master kitchen.
We intend to outsource the entire supply chain," Gupta elaborated.
Bang for the buck
But, is all this expansion business even worth the while, or is it just a blind bid to pump up size? Mindful of all variables to make the expansion a money-spinner, the company is acutely aware of its capabilities. Jumboking has a simple business model, which targets prominent locations with high footfalls, like railway stations. It typically rents out premises to set up stores.u00a0
u00a0"We already have a 15 per cent year-on-year growth in terms of same store sales. Whatever new volume growth we get will be additional. The way we look at it, Mumbai alone has a potential for some 500 stores.
Demand is more than supply and we are not able to cope with it," Gupta said. But, there are some challenges, and they're not food inflation or the spiralling costs of raw material, as the company bulk procures the ingredients in advance. "Our prices are ridiculously low at the moment. If we expand, we have to have a good transport-cum-cold-storage facility. However, this will push up the present price of our products. The challenge is to put the logistics in place without pushing up the prices. We have no choice but to employ technology to make Jumboking a truly national brand," Gupta observed.
Gupta has ambitious hopes for the humble junk food, and, perhaps, rightly so.
"Who knows,," he said, "Just like the globally renowned Big Mac index of inflation, we might have a Jumboking vada pav index to measure inflation in the country."
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