"We want every guest who comes into our world to have the best possible experience": Why Dishoom will not do delivery
Speaking at the Casual Dining Show last week, Trollip outlined the restaurant group’s decision to revaluate its operational structure, after realising that the team “weren’t building the business we would be proud of in a few years”.
The restaurant joined Deliveroo in April 2015, and used it for lunch services for just under a year, before stopping in February 2016.
Trollip says that now, following restructure, Dishoom “will not do delivery,” because at the size the business is now, it would impact on one of one of its fundamental principles, ‘Seva’, which means ‘selfless service’.
“It is important for our team that when they undertake a task, they complete it in a big hearted way and ensure the execution of that task is ‘first class’. We abide by that pretty vigorously,” he says.
“When you’re driven by financials instead of awesome food and drink and service, you’re controlling for those things. We flipped that entirely.”
Dishoom’s restaurants often have long queues outside, and the restaurant takes the decision to prioritise these customers, rather than have service diluted by a team overstretched to delivery, says Trollip.
“People do often ask why we don’t offer delivery [any more]. The reason is that we want every guest who comes into our world to have the best possible experience in every aspect of their visit,” says a spokesperson for Dishoom.
“Our menus, restaurants and operations are designed around guests dining in, and so we fear that by trying to service that additional demand, we might stretch ourselves too thinly and not be able to provide the level of quality that we aim for.”
The restaurants do currently offer a limited weekday takeaway menu before 5pm, which allows people to take items away without “putting additional pressure on our team”, which would impact on service.
Dishoom opened its first London site in Covent Garden in 2010 and has since expanded to Shoreditch, King’s Cross, Carnaby Street, Kensington and Edinburgh. The next opening for the group will be in Manchester.
