Outdoor Visit to “The chocolate room”
We all have visited various restaurants, many times, but our visit to the restaurant “The Chocolate Room” gave us different views and dimensions about a restaurant.
We enjoy restaurants as a customer by choosing, exploring variety of foods and at times even cribbing about taste and quality. This time our goal was to understand the various process involved in working of a restaurant
We first observed the decor and seating arrangement of the restaurant. Then we explored various items in the menu – why they are there, what they contain, how they are made, why that name is given etc. An amazing range of chocolate dishes – drinks hot and cold, crepes, cakes, shots, etc enticed us. We also explored the snacks menu with rolls, burgers, sandwiches etc.
Children were particularly excited with various interesting names like ‘Ahh’, Fondue’
It was interesting to know the ingredients like rum and whisky are names of sauces and not any alcohol contents and hot chocolate names like cuddle cup, warming cup were based on the cutlery used.
One of the most exciting part for children was when visited the cake room to understood the process of making the cakes – their types, designs and decorations. Chocolate smell and yummy cakes in front of us, it was so difficult for the adults too keep our temptations in control.
We also went into kitchen for Burgers where we understood process of making mayonnaise sauce, ingredients in burgers. What was really interesting was to see the pieces of capsicum being used for color coding (red, green, yellow) to indicate as non-veg, veg and fish berger.
Thanks to Mr.Arun, the owner of The Chocolate room for answering a whole lot of questions – specially helping us to understand the process of pricing based on ingredients and the market. He talked about surveying other restaurants and then look at pricing competitively. Also how to manage when prices of ingredients fluctuate. He also explained process of stock maintenance – weekly review based on business/ costing.
He shared a beautiful quote on restaurant business “swim through and not quit to achieve success”. No wonder the restaurant is adorned with beautiful quotes, posters telling us history of chocolate and even health benefits of chocolates.
Children not only enjoyed the lip smacking drinks and cakes offered by the restaurant but also got exposed to the challenging yet exciting business of running a restaurant. Thank Chocolate room to make our day memorable with lots of thoughts about business, challenges, success, process, customers and most of all chocolate!