Vidya Deshpande traces the rise of Café King Riyaaz Amlani, the man behind Mocha, Social, Smoke House Deli and more

Social is going to be bigger than Starbucks. A tall claim, you say? Not if you are Riyaaz Amlani, CEO and Managing Director of Impresario Entertainment and Hospitality. He makes this claim proudly on his company website, and going by the rate his cafes are coming up, from one in 2001, to 42 across 14 cities under four brands, he may well be able to achieve his target sooner than you think. No wonder it has earned him the sobriquet of being Café King.

From being a shoe salesman when he started his working life, to being the owner of one of the most talked about restaurant chains, has indeed thrown the spotlight on him. Amlani’s first café in 2001 was Mocha, which he started in Bandra. It was a concept café, a place where you could chill, hang loose and smoke a sheesha or two, while downing a few shots of caffeine. I remember going to the Greater Kailash outlet in Delhi years ago, when it started. It was a spot where all the college girls from Lady Shri Ram College hung out, waiting for their boyfriends from Delhi University to join them. Since then, Amlani and Café Mocha have gone places. It has 20 outlets in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata and a host of tier-II cities.

But Amlani is not a man to rest on his laurels. He realised soon enough that the big cities wanted fine dining and not just casual cafés to hang out in. So he created a middle ground between the two and launched Smoke House Delis in seven cities, and Salt Water Grills in three cities.

The food in these café-restaurants are not as cheap as a regular café (Rs 250 for a sandwich, for instance) but neither as expensive as fine dining restaurant (where dishes cost upwards of Rs 1,000). Instead, for Rs 800-850 a head, you can get a sumptuous meal with some signature dishes the Impresario team has created.

But this wasn’t enough for Amlani. He was itching to revolutionise the café space with something quirky and different. To occupy the space in the café market, he came up with an idea from watching the crowds at his more serious competitors. Thus was born Social – from the idea of a café that doubles up as an office, too. Having seen the number of people who walk into cafés with work in hand, Social was created to give people a spiffy address they could use for official purposes at a tenth of the cost of renting office space.

For as low as Rs 5,000 a month one can use Social for all office needs. The rent is redeemable against food and drinks ordered and Social provides you with an office address, office supplies and a swish place to hold conferences. The menu is interesting, with all-day breakfast options named after famous company directors; smart lunch platters other than a range of burgers; hot dogs and grills, too. It also has a bar to make after-hour meetings more exciting! With seven Social Cafes already in place, he’s raising funds from investors to set up more.

Smoke House Delis, his other brand, on the other hand, are on the lines of a European café with pizzas, pastas and grills other than sandwiches on the menu. This is what the company is currently focused on. Amlani plans to increase the number of Smoke House Delis to 30 and also increase the number of Salt Water Grill cafes, while taking the number of Social cafés to 18 in the near future.

Impresario also recently announced a tie-up with Mirah Hospitality (which owns Rajdhani and Manchester United Cafes) for space sharing in malls, so as to ramp up its café numbers.

The company is growing at a fast pace, but whether Social will be able to muscle out the Tatas-backed Starbucks is a battle that is being keenly watched by the food industry.