Chai Franchises are now Everyone’s Cup of Tea
Indians have been obsessed with tea or chai (as it is often called in India)almost forever. The obsession can be seen by the fact that Indians drink around 30 cups of tea for every cup of coffee! Despite having such a big potential as a market, it is surprising that there was not an organised tea café business in the India. Local tea shops that are installed in nooks and corners enjoyed hegemony in India until a few business-minded people noticed the potential of tea cafés.
Tea cafés are now taking over the Indian F&B market by storm. Fuelled by the factors such as ever-growing love for tea, rising disposable incomes, innovations and a blend of technology, tea cafés are becoming favourite hangout spots for Indians to have a conversation over ‘chai’, thereby making it a perfect place for investors to invest their money well.
High on ‘Chai’
As already mentioned, Indians are obsessed with chai so much so, that our mornings start with a good hot cuppa,‘bed-tea’ and the rest happens over it. When Britishers introduced tea in the Colonial India, they introduced us with Singpho tea, a type of tea leaves simply brewed with water and sugar. After it, Indians owned tea like their own and gave the Singpho tea some Indian twists by creating variations like adrak chai, kadak chai, masala chai, and many more. And that’s not it; Indian entrepreneurs are taking all the Indian variants of tea to overseas by introducing the fresh concept of tea cafés – cafés that specifically sell Indian variants of tea.
The craze of chai seems to be unstoppable in India, so entrepreneurs find an advantage by introducing more new variants of chai to tickle the taste buds of the chai-lovers. This is what is making the entire tea cafe market boom like anything.
Chai Franchise: A Business Model that Sells
With such a craze of chai in India, chai franchises are emerging every now and then, with variants that are attracting tea lovers. Chaayos, one of the most famous tea cafés in India, operates on a franchise model and provides franchise opportunities to expand their business furthermore. Chai Garam, another big player in the tea café market, serves a huge variety of tea for its customers and is providing franchise opportunities to potential franchisees in various platforms like indoor kiosks, outdoor kiosks, ATM space, retail outlet, and shopin shop, food-truck, e-rickshaw and cart.
A chai franchise is a lucrative business model also because of the fewer requirements it needs to start it as a business. For instance, a tea stall requires tea leaves, water, sugar and other kitchen equipments as their basic requirement. And, in a franchise model, you just have to add up the costs of decor, seating inventory, and employees’ salaries, which also do not require much of an investment. According to sources, a small chai franchise can be started in an average investment of Rs 9-15 lakhs (investment amount increases with the size of the outlet) for area of about 100-500 sq ft. All of this together makes chai franchise everyone's cup of tea.
