Beyond the bill: how food business is dealing with price rise Premium

Surviving the restaurant business in Bengaluru amid price hikes and challenges faced by owners and staff.

Opening a cafe is a dream for many, but sustaining a restaurant business in Bengaluru is not an easy task. The city leads the way in food trends and hip new restaurants. However, it is a different story if you dig deeper. It is not all smooth sailing, especially in light of the new price hikes in coffee, milk, and gas cylinders. Across the city, small eateries, cafes, and bakeries face several challenges.

Udayshankar Shenoy is the chef and owner of Lazy Suzy, a popular cafe in Indiranagar. “Many places are shutting down within the next four months. We are fighting now to survive and not be one of them. Good business, profit, growth ... These are far-off topics now,” he laments.

He explains how prices on the menu at restaurants are based on many factors. “We cannot decide prices on our whims and fancy. It depends on things such as raw materials, price of labour, the price of electricity and more. And then there is a margin. The profit margin is usually only about 15%. And that is also different for different dishes. A caramel custard may be 10%, while a Belgian chocolate cake that uses imported and expensive chocolate only gives you around 6%. The price of chocolate has doubled in the last eight months.”

Narasimha Rao is a retired bank manager who opened Aaha Thindi, a darshini on Cunningham Road, last year. There have been three or four restaurants that have come and gone at the location in a decade. He says Cunningham Road may be a posh and central area, but the average spending power of customers is low. Darshinis are particularly struggling with milk and coffee price hikes. Currently, they charge ₹15 for a coffee; roadside stalls offer it for ₹10.

They have not yet increased prices for these reasons, and it is the business owners who take a hit.

“No matter what we do or say, customers have a set pattern in their minds. They feel, a microbrewery can charge such an amount of money, while a cafe can only charge only that much,” says Udayshankar.

Chef Tresa Francis transitioned from being a home caterer to running her restaurant inside the Bangalore International Centre (BIC) in Domlur. She serves home-style food from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka. She launched in July 2024. Hailing from Kerala, she has been in Bengaluru for almost three decades now. Her main challenge was moving from her own space to trusting others to do the cooking in a commercial set-up.