That night, Adil went on a visit of ZEST Outlets. He took a visit to see he set-up of the Outlet. Naturally, His first step was the Flagship in Bandra. He visited the building.
The ZEST flagship in Bandra West sat on 18,000 sq ft of Bandra West real estate, and the first thing most people noticed when they saw it properly was that it did not look like a restaurant. It looked like something that had been thought about for a very long time.
The building itself accounted for 9,500 sq ft of built-up area rising across 6 floors and a Basement, with 4 elevator lifts running the full height of it. The remaining land had been given over to two things, a 4,500 sq ft outdoor park of planted greens and paved pathways that softened the building's street presence considerably, and a parking area behind that took 100 cars in organized marked bays. The park was not just for decoration. It has seating and breathing room and the reason the building did not feel like it was pressing itself onto the street the way most Bandra commercial buildings did.
Inside, the 6 floors each carried a distinct purpose. Basement acts as Storage, The ground floor was the loudest and most public. It has main dining, counter service, the entrance from the park, guest reception.
Behind it, taking up most of the rear of the same level and spilling into the Second floor, sat the kitchen. 1,800 sq ft of full central production kitchen with industrial equipment, cold storage, prep areas, and staff facilities. This was Sudhir's floor. He had been here since 5 AM on opening morning running equipment checks with the systematic calm of a man who considered preparation the only honest response to the possibility of failure.
Third Floor has, formal dining, private booths, the kind of seating that required a reservation rather than a queue. Fourth Floor went further, into private dining rooms and event and banquet space, the part of the building designed for the Bombay that conducted its business and its celebrations over long tables. Fifth floor held the management offices, staff rooms, and meeting rooms, the administrative machinery that kept the building functioning. And Six Floor was something unusual for a food business in 1992. A centralized billing and operations center where computerized systems pulled real-time data from all 12 locations simultaneously, consolidating the entire network into a single readable picture. And then they send the data to the headquarters building in Andheri west.
Supporting all of it were the facilities that most customers never thought about but whose absence they would have noticed immediately. 4 restroom blocks distributed across the dining floors. Central air conditioning running through the entire building. A generator backup that meant a power cut, would not stop service. A dedicated loading and unloading bay at the rear for supply deliveries, separate from the customer parking, so that the movement of goods never intersected with the movement of guests. A security cabin at the parking entrance. CCTV covering every floor and the full parking area. Staff locker rooms and a break area where the team that had been on since 5 AM could sit for 10 minutes without standing in a corridor. A PA system that worked both internally across floors and externally onto the street.
Next he visited all four Mid-Tier Outlet, Each of the 4 mid-tier outlets; Andheri West, Juhu, Dadar, Nariman Point, sat on 8,000 sq ft of land, with 5,500 sq ft of built-up area distributed across 3 floors and served by 2 elevator lifts. The parking behind each building took 30 cars. The seating across each outlet reached 180+ covers.
The third floors followed a logic similar to the flagship but compressed to the scale and character of each neighbourhood. The ground floor carried the main dining room, counter service, guest reception, and at the rear, a 900 sq ft kitchen, full service, same equipment standards as Bandra West, same menu, same procurement chain, because Adil had made clear from the beginning that the food arriving at a table in all outlet would be identical to the food arriving at a table in Bandra West. The second floor stepped up to formal dining and private booths. The third held private dining, a small event space, and the manager's office.
The facilities across all four locations, followed the same internal logic as the flagship scaled to their size, 2 restroom blocks distributed across the dining floors, central air conditioning, generator backup, a dedicated rear entry for deliveries kept separate from the customer-facing front, a security cabin at the parking entrance, CCTV across all floors and parking, and staff rooms where the teams who had been in since before dawn could function as human beings rather than machines.
His last visit was the Seven neighborhood outlets. He gave them a quick visit. As it was already late.
The 7 neighbourhood outlets were the smallest buildings in the network and the ones that would, over time, do the most consistent daily work.
Each sat on 4,500 sq ft of land with 3,200 sq ft of built-up area across 2 floors and 1 elevator lift. The parking took 10 cars, which was appropriate for the streets these buildings occupied, tighter, more residential, neighbourhoods where most people arrived on foot or by auto rather than by car. The seating across each outlet reached 120+ covers distributed between both floors.
The ground floor carried everything essential, main dining, counter service, guest reception, and at the rear a 600 sq ft kitchen, compact but fully equipped to the same standards as the rest of the network. The upper floor held the remaining dining room, the manager's cabin, and the restroom for that level. Each building had 1 restroom block per floor, split air conditioning running throughout rather than the central systems of the larger outlets, generator backup, a small staff room, and CCTV covering both floors and the parking entry.
After the visit, As he was already very tired because of movie shooting and visits of the Zest branches. He returned to his house, went straight to his and fell asleep.