Tell us about your business & what were the challenges that you faced so far?
Slanz Café is a chain of cafes founded by 4 entrepreneurs. “slán” roughly translates to a “nice journey” in Irish and as our tag line says “We met over a cup of coffee and the rest is our story” our story has been a journey one cup at a time.
Every day gets new challenges in the F&B market so it would be very difficult for us to pick up few, as this is a dynamic world where customers perception is our reality.
Tell us about your achievement you are most proud of?
We have been in the market for almost a decade now, and we have managed to survive all the googly/yorker the game could have, demonetization, general elections, state elections, GST, aggregators unfair discount and arm twisting campaign, we have managed to come out in flying colors every time. Now COVID-19 which is going to be another challenge we believe we will get through this too.
What is your USP and where do you see yourself in next 5 years?
We are not just a café, we are a company which runs using a lot of data analytics and business intelligence tools and skills. We use a lot of technology which helps us run the enterprise seamlessly than most unorganized or standalone cafes.
How difficult is it to stay in this industry nowadays?
As mentioned about the issues, we have faced in one of my previous answer. Every day is a new day and it is all about being able to serve our customers with same consistent services, which has many internal and external issues which needs attention to details. How to be able to invite customers into the café to being able to live up to there reputation and also manage the competition? This is a tough business which looks very glamorous from outside.
How much do you think that social media helps you to work more effectively in knowing your audience or knowing what’s new in the market?
Social media is an important tool to be able to communicate be able to hear from our customers, it is also the tool where the café is an entity by itself and needs attention to be able to have a personality which is relatable to the customer base we need to work with.
What would be your suggestion to the budding entrepreneurs?
Dream, learn and commit to the idea, it is always easy to lose heart but it is all about doing the same things over and over to make things work.