Forty years of Corner House: Narayan Rao on how he built Bengaluru’s beloved icecream brand
The Hindu
The main ingredients of this story: happiness, happenstances, and hot chocolate sauce
During my conversation with Narayan Rao, the founder of Bengaluru’s popular icecream brand Corner House, I tell him, rather unwittingly, “Corner House is a legacy brand–”
“You are saying this, not me!” he interjects, with the smile of a chess player who has snared his opponent.
It is, however, not preposterous to assume that Corner House is, indeed, a legacy brand in Bengaluru. It has, after all, 19 parlours across the city and two more in Mysuru. It has been around for 40 years, withstanding competition from other international icecream brands. It sells, on average, 1.5 lakh litres of ice cream every month.
More than these numbers, though, it is the familiarity the people of the city – at least those who can afford ice creams – have with Corner House that begot my assumption of it being a legacy brand. Three people I know shared their unsolicited comments when I told them I am going to write about Corner House.
“Don’t you dare leave out Death By Chocolate (one of the most-soldflavours) in your article,” threatened a former colleague.
A lawyer texted: “We used to go there for everything. Good day? Corner House. Bad day? Corner House. Exam started? Corner House. Exam over? Corner House. Saturday afternoon? Corner House.”
“Corner House is perhaps the only thing in Bangalore that has either stayed the same or got better,” said a journalist.