Business Plan

I'm not good at business or finance- let me make that clear upfront. I'm not one of those people who look around and find amazing entrepreneurial enterprises hiding in plain sight, nor am I particularly good at figuring out how to make more money.

But, disclaimers aside, I have a business plan in mind which can ONLY succeed and I'm surprised that nobody has figured this out yet: South Indian delis.

If Jewish people can have their delis serving pastramis and pickles and Italian people can have pastas and pizzas, why can't Indians (well, Tamils anyway) have their kozhambus and pacchadis being sold in little restaurants in the right areas? Nobody would argue that in practically every city of the US, there is a good sized pocket of Indians. Everyone knows that 33% of the Indian population is vegetarian. Why is that nearly all the Indian restaurants in American cities serve crappy, greasy North Indian fare? And, I'm going to sound like a typical maami here, why the heck does an Indian restaurant combine non vegetarian and vegetarian foods? Haven't we evolved enough to have a purely vegetarian restaurant?
In Pittsburgh, there is a single purely vegetarian, South Indian restaurant called Udipi. It has great demand, makes a good deal of money (I'm willing to bet) and is located miles from civilization, making it impossible to get to without a car and a decent sense of direction.

What are undergraduate and graduate students without a car supposed to do? So we eat shit, literally. We hog on fries (salads, when we feel guilty) and "garden" burgers, we search for veggie options in the multitude of Chinese and Thai restaurants around us (ignoring the little voice that says that most vegetarian fare in these places contains fish oil anyway), or we go to cheap Indian restaurants which serves the most godawful food in the world.

We need a bunch of mini-Udipis around university campuses. We could sell truly good, inexpensive, veggie South Indian food and not only be happy that we are not contributing to the obesity crisis, but also feel satisfied that we are able to make enough money to sustain the business. And it doesn't even have to be just South Indian. Gujaratis and Marwadis have extensive vegetarian menus too.

So here's the outline:
Type of business: small restaurant
Location: near by university campuses
Type of food sold: see above for detailed rant
Initial capital to be invested: hmm... will need money for
a) shop in prime location (not more than 1 block from undergrad/grad schools)
b) for ovens (for fermenting dosai and idli batter in winter), stoves, grinders, blenders, and pulverizers (for making sambar and rasam powders)
c) for getting suppliers for selling large quantities of the ingredients that go into these powders, batters etc- various types of lentils, chillies, rice, wheat and so on- basically, the stuff you'd find in any Indian kitchen, on a larger scale.
d) licensing for all the restaurant... which should not be as expensive as one might expect, since there will be no charges for alcohol, there won't be issues of keeping frozen meat sterile and so on.

Our target population: Indian students, staff, faculty at the universities (mainly), and also non-Indians who like vegetarian food.

Other services offered: free delivery (initially, at least) to offices, if they order a few hours in advance.

Okay, need to stop this post and go eat... all this talk about food is making me hungry.