Known of its vegetarian delicacies, Cream Centre is a prominent name for over six decades whose secret recipe has passed down for three generations. “We never compromise on quality. It has always been an integral part of our ethos to source only the best ingredients. Secondly, we are constantly striving to evolve ourselves as a brand and stay ahead of the curve. We are always pondering over how to improve our customers' dining experience, whether that be in terms of new dishes, aesthetic presentations, or our ambience,” shared Rishi Chona, Director at Prince Cuisines that owns Cream Centre. Excerpts from the interview:

The Original Channa BhaturaTM has been a best-selling dish for Cream Centre since its inception. What makes this dish so special, and how do you ensure its consistent quality?

This recipe is a family secret and has been passed down for 3 generations.  26 spices are freshly ground personally by a family member to ensure quality as well as secrecy, and sent to all our outlets across the country. The channa is boiled overnight on a very slow flame so the centre is soft and melts in the mouth, while the outer part remains firm without breaking. We pay a premium to import the best quality Channa from South America, Mexico. We specify a particular size of grain, which is then sieved according to our own requirements in order to ensure a consistent taste.

Cream Centre has successfully adapted to changing trends and introduced innovative dishes like the World's Best NachosTM and Sizzling Brownie FundaeTM. Can you tell us about the process of conceptualizing and creating these original dishes?

These 2 dishes were personal inventions by my father, Sanjiv Chona. He is an extremely innovative person and was also responsible for introducing Mexican food and multi cuisine sizzlers into India. We also have speciality head chefs in a variety of cuisines such as Indian, Chinese, Italian, Mexican and chaats. Our team meets frequently to propose new ideas and conceptualize new dishes for our customers.

Cream Centre has become an eating destination, creating a lifestyle in the vegetarian restaurant business. Could you elaborate on the steps taken to establish this identity and make it stand out among other restaurants?

We believe in providing an all-round and holistic dining experience for our customers. We provide high quality food, in a modern and comfortable environment at affordable prices. Many restaurants provide one or two of the above but not the entire package. We don’t believe that we are in the business of simply selling food, but in the business of providing joyful and memorable experiences.

With so much competition in the restaurant industry, how do you ensure that your consistently high-quality food and service live up to the legacy of Cream Centre?

We take extreme measures to ensure quality and consistency of food. We have extremely detailed SOP’s and systems in place which all employees must follow. We have chefs on our team, whose sole job is to ensure quality control. In all our outlets, food tasting is done daily by the unit team and records are maintained of the same. Our family members also are regularly at our outlets to ensure quality is being maintained.

How does Cream Centre engage with its customers and take their feedback into account for further improvements and new offerings?

We collect comment cards from our customers on a regular basis in order to stay in touch with the pulse of our clients and take their feedback very seriously. Our senior team, and myself personally go through thousands of these comment cards monthly. Before the start of a festival or launching a new dish, we always serve trails to our customers and collect data in the form of these comment cards in order to fine tune our offerings before the final launch.

Cream Centre has expanded to multiple locations. What are the challenges and benefits of maintaining consistency across all outlets while also adapting to the local tastes and preferences of different regions?

Fortunately, we are blessed with an incredible team at CC. We have a number of employees that have been with us for up to 40 years and who know our brand inside out. While this is a challenging task as our food is prepared fresh daily, we have a specialist quality control team that travels to our outlets across the country to ensure systems are being followed and quality is being maintained. We have a team of chefs that specialize in a variety of cuisines, so we are easily able to cater to requirements of different regions.

Can you share any plans or strategies for the future growth and development of Cream Centre as a brand?

We are currently in the process of rebranding Cream Centre. This is not out of any urgent need, but simply because we believe that we must keep evolving ourselves as not only the industry, but India itself is growing and changing at such a rapid rate. We are looking to further evolve our menus and food offerings as well as make our packaging extremely customer friendly. We have recently hired specialists for beverages and deserts in order to incorporate some really exciting mocktails and sundaes into our menus. We are also planning on introducing a new chic ambience, which will be introduced in our 9^th CC in Mumbai opening shortly in Thane. We get hundreds of franchise inquiries every month, however we are very picky when it comes to choosing our franchise partners. We recently signed a new CC franchise in the city of Salem and we now have a total of 15 franchises outside of Mumbai.