Tandoori chicken, vegetable masala, the fried-dough treat called chaat — these and other specialties continue to give Americans a taste for Indian dishes and restaurants, along with an interest in cuisines from Southeast Asia and other parts of the continent. “We really think that Southeast Asian food broadly is among the best food in the world,” said Jeremy Morgan, CEO of San Francisco–based Tava Kitchen, a fast-casual restaurant chain that serves up the foods of India and those of Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.
The Indian and Southeast Asian food segment is a comparatively small part of the broader restaurant market, being dominated mostly by local operators rather than by national chains that people would recognize. As a result, many menu items continue to be unfamiliar. “We’re trying to turn that on its head,” said Morgan.
Tava Kitchen was established in 2011 and today operates three restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area, with three more set to open in the Denver area this year.
Ethnic cuisine is among the top food trends ahead for 2017, according to the National Restaurant Association. Americans are eating out more, but they also are seeking greater variety in their restaurant choices and to move beyond burgers and pizza, says Morgan. “There is no question that Americans are more adventurous with food than they ever have been,” he said. “That is certainly the trend that we are jumping all over.”
Certainly, there is lots of interest in Southeast Asian and Indian food. Indeed, Tava Kitchen expects to begin franchising this year a move that will help accelerate the chain’s national expansion plans. As a former Smashburger executive, Morgan says he hopes to employ that experience in advancing the Tava Kitchen brand. “I have been to the party, so to speak, when it comes to being part of a high-growth concept,” he said, “and, absolutely, that is the ambition that we have for Tava as well.”
In general, the Indian restaurant niche is such that there is still lots of room for good chains seeking territory, observers say. “I think there is a big opportunity in that space, if done properly,” said David Orkin, CBRE’s restaurant practice leader for the Americas. The successful Indian food operators, he says, will be those that incorporate a modern design and make unfamiliar food items more accessible by such means as menu descriptions and photographs.
Indian cuisine has yet to be done on a large scale, Orkin says, as the chains still tend to be relatively small. He points to Choolaah Indian BBQ, a small, Cleveland-based fast-casual chain in the early stages of going national. At present, Choolaah has one restaurant in its home city, a second that opened in Fairfax, Va., in late December, and a lease signed in Philadelphia for a third unit.
The saturation across other U.S. restaurant categories, such as burgers, pizza and Mexican food, is another factor behind the expansion of this one. “The Indian category is not new from a cuisine standpoint, but we haven’t seen it really developed,” said Orkin. “We are seeing a lot of Middle Eastern food developed now, and I think Indian is a natural extension of all of that, as one of the next categories to really get hit from a growth standpoint.”