Café The Joan

Two years ago in our capital city, one of my coworkers, Rana, was fired. He took it casually because he was interested in coffee and wanted to open a restaurant. However, before he could plan his own restaurant, he was picked by a restaurant and they put him in charge of their coffee section. We both knew the owner of this restaurant as their regular visitors and our frequent discussions with him. I also knew Rana by his relentlessness and willingness to go the extra mile to learn and experiment with his own expertise.

Though this restaurant has been open for a couple of years now and we went there for almost two years, we never knew it would be a different story for Rana. I only went there last week during my visit to Delhi and felt the taste of coffee was better. Of course, the coffee was better. You would expect nothing less from a barista of Rana's caliber and his expertise in coffee making. Incidentally, he was in Brazil for two years before he joined our company as an accountant, but he never forgot his first love, coffee.

Rana had the idea of making the coffee section a spectacle for the restaurant, so he suggested, that Bene, the restaurant owner, hire a few special servers whom he called coffee mermaids, and the idea clicked. Rana knew the Delhiites would love their coffee served by specially dressed women. These servers don't pick up the empty cups and other utensils but are helped by their male counterparts.

I guess Rana had this idea for his own restaurant, which he probably got while living in Brazil and Europe. But I also agree that his idea was a kind of drama that is now becoming typical of other restaurants, fine dining restaurants, and bars that sell their stuff at a premium price. Maybe this surprise factor is a reason, but let me make it clear, all this drama is a part of it, but their coffee sells for its quality.

So the secret of Rana is not the mermaids that he has hired to give it a little extra attraction, but a number of other factors, like a new menu with the help of a team of baristas that specialize in various coffee styles from different countries, and of course, local flavors. Their overall food quality is much higher than other restaurants in the area. However, the new additions to their menu don't mean they have discarded their old favorites.

So that's how Rana has helped this restaurant find success. He has evolved, he changed, and he innovated. But that doesn't mean that the owner forgot to connect with his old guests. And this was visible in the way he greeted me even though I visited the place after almost fifteen months. I can clearly see that running a restaurant is an art, especially during this troubled time when the number of visitors has gone down substantially.

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