After the successful culinary expeditions in Europe, the brother duo Yeshwanth and Ashwin opened The Thick Shake Factory in Hyderabad way back in 2013, to spread the joy of sipping the shakes and beverages to their own people here in India. Yet again, they open their maiden outlet in Mumbai to delight the city with their lip-smacking Thick Shakes!

Yashwant  Nag  Mocherla Founder of The Thick Shake Factory talks to Everything Experiential about the exotic chosen flavours and specialities of Shakes that the chain delivers the world over in a tet-e-tet with Priyaankaa Mathur

Please tell us about your journey so far? Why did you choose Bandra to launch the first outlet in Mumbai, Is that a strategic decision?

We started of four and a half years back and have been growing slowly and steadily.We have opened 92 outlets in India, as if now. Primarily we are present in South of India and Ahmedabad in Gujarat apart from California in US. So to enter Mumbai, Bandra is certainly a very strategic location for us, since it’s quite a hub with lot of eating joints as people come here from all across Mumbai to eat and spend their evening, it’s certainly a very prime location to reach out to our TG.

What are your Target segments?

Our TG is primarily from the age of 15-30, since 70% of Indians are in that age, mostly college going students, and office goers, who want to have a shake while coming back from office and children of-course who love our shakes in various flavours. The shakes are rich in nutrition value, as we also serve protein shakes for health conscious gym goers. Our tasty nutritious shakes in varied flavours, like chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, Mango makes them ideal for the growing children.

Please tell us about your products and where do you see the demand coming from?

Today, we see people moving away from the aerated drinks and carbonated beverages and our shakes are not like the other carbonated soft drinks, so we see a lot of demand for healthy and natural beverages.

What makes you No. 1 in the Shakes category, what’s your USP?

Basically we created the concept of a ‘Thick shake’ and we have been the first in the Thick Shake Category, also we are the first chain to do an organised selling of Thick Shakes in India. Our USP is the Thickness of the shakes, as one needs to eat it with a spoon, which too justifies our name. Also, we are an end to end supply chain as we produce most of our ingredients ourselves in our factories and that’s how we maintain high standards of quality for our products and stand out from the rest. Of-course, we do have the diluted milkshakes to offer.

What are your specialities, could you elaborate on your Menu?

We have a standard set of menu across the world. Our primary attractions are Belgium Chocolate, Peanut Butter Shakes and Protein Shakes and multiple shakes for different TGs and age groups. We have over 100 products in the fixed menu along with ‘Shape your shake’ concept where the customers can customise their shakes, choosing from a variety of ingredients to make permutations and combinations and create billions of shakes, and that is what that differentiates us also. Our product range starts from an affordable Rs 100-135, so it can cater to all segments of the society.

Where do you see the QSR market going?

QSR segment is a 25,000 crore industry in India and its growing at 25-30 % year on year. There are a lot of home grown brands emerging in India that have a huge scope to expand not only in India but across the globe. Here we have targeted a niche category of milkshake, so similar examples are Burger King for Burgers or Chai Point for tea. So we can say that there is a 100 crore market for each category. Today, the culture of taking a franchise and expanding a US brand in India is not as lucrative as a business. There is a lot of scope for new categories for retailing of products, which will Of course create thousands of jobs in the market.

The Thick Shake factory launch saw Hampus Bergqvist and Johan Bartolia and Pratap, part of the famous 2 foreigners in Bollywood, busy sipping and enjoying the shakes, who while talking to EE said “We tasted couple of shakes at the Thick Shake Factory, like the Protein Shake and the Strawberry Coconut Shake, that are really rich, tasty and have a great nutritional value too. We have been in India for past three years and love Mumbai City for its energy, craziness and its exotic food and have tried shakes at lots of places, but this shake is very different, from what we have had before. Thick shake factory is a unique and a different concept, so we came to support it and a friend who works here with the chain. We too create unique concepts, and people are loving them!”