I was interviewing AD Singh at his longest-standing restaurant in Delhi, Olive Bar and Kitchen, and one of the questions I asked him during our chat was about the pace of restaurant openings in Delhi. “Where do you see this going?” I asked him.
“While it is great for the food scene in the capital, they are opening and shutting at the same pace,” he responded. “Most of them open without realising that it is the easiest business to burn your money and eventually fall prey to the wrath of the three-year jinx.” That refers to the industry-wide phenomenon where roughly 60% of new restaurants fail or change ownership within their first three years of business. Since then, my conversations with restaurateurs who run restaurants and social spaces across formats have featured a common theme: the rough waters one must navigate before one can emerge victorious and successful in the restaurant industry.
That makes a question worth posing: “What makes a restaurant a success or a failure?”
What Do The Restaurateurs Have To Say?
While Delhi has restaurants opening up every other day, a select few bring new concepts, refined menus, and a great experience to the city, and some of these openings are credited to Sahil Sambhi, the mind behind Japonico, Let’s Kiss, Latango, and Vietnom. With close to a decade in the industry, I asked him about his definition of a good restaurant. “It has to be a full package,” he said. “Diners are stepping out not just for the food but for a unique experience.”
Sambhi also mentioned how a restaurant’s location, its staff and servers, and attention to detail are some other factors that make or break a space for him. “It’s a good sign if the staff knows the menu and enjoys the work. A frustrated and inhospitable staff kill a place for me,” he added.
For Chef Parth Gupta, who also owns some of Delhi’s most-loved spots, including Cicchetti Italiano, Bloom Cafe and Cakery, and Firenze Gelateria, a good restaurant must be able to capture everything in the same language and deliver consistently. “I cannot enter an Italian restaurant and listen to Indian classical music,” he said.
He also mentioned how the size of the menu must be consistent with the size of the kitchen. “A randomly-designed menu featuring everything under the sun, paired with a small kitchen, points to a confused and desperate restaurant. You can be a multi-cuisine space, but that needs to come with the means to execute it too,” he added.
Hygiene and cleanliness were some other factors that Gupta listed. “A dirty menu, a creaking chair, and the state of the washrooms affect the overall experience you seek out of a social space,” he said. He also added that while most restaurants believe that good food can outdo poor ambience and service, each contributes equally to a diner’s takeaway. “It is different when you are eating at a roadside shack versus when you are stepping out to dine at a restaurant, because what you are paying for both is numbers apart,” he added.
A natural question after this is: what makes for a bad restaurant? When I asked the interviewees about it, they also shared stories from their own projects.
Today, Delhi witnesses a revival of food neighbourhoods that were once considered long gone. From restaurants crowding a single Hauz Khan lane that was considered obsolete to speakeasies finding a safe haven in Vasant Vihar, this renaissance points to a larger trend in the capital: limited real estate.
“Limited real estate and organised addresses mean that restaurateurs sign whatever is available, even at an exorbitant rent. When that happens, they tend to pressure staff to boost sales, make the menu more commercial, reduce product quality, and do whatever it takes to recover the rent and make additional profit,” said Sambhi, citing it as one of the biggest reasons for a restaurant’s failure. Referring to his experience with Vietnom, Cyber Hub, which he launched in 2019 but had to shut in June 2025, he added: “From when I signed the property seven years ago to now, the rent doubled, and we were paying 30% of our top line to DLF as rent. I realised the pressure was falling on the team.” Thus, according to him, picking a location that doesn’t suit your concept, format, and economics becomes central to failure.
In addition, he mentioned that restaurants that try to copy rather than draw inspiration from others should not assume they will fail. “If someone has done something well, you can’t replicate it, because they already exist. What people don’t realise is that in an already competitive market, copy-pasting concepts, ideas, and menus will only increase competition for you,” added Sambhi. Building on that point, his fine-dining Japanese restaurant, Japonico, takes inspiration from Zuma and Nubo but offers his take on the spaces rather than trying to duplicate the exact experience for the capital.
Gupta, on the other hand, spoke about menu engineering being one of the most common areas where restaurants fail. “When I opened Bloom Cakery, I wanted to add different dishes from my travels across the world to the menu, and while I was keeping up with the quality and flavours, I was also confusing the diner. I, like most restaurants today, was trying to be a jack of all trades but master of none,” added Gupta. He also mentioned that at a time when India is tilting towards single-product QSRs, housing everything in your menu is a mistake many are likely to make. Additionally, menu design has to consider the feasibility of execution. “If you decide to place an Arabiata and a malai kofta on the same menu, you have to make sure that your kitchen is ready to support it,” Gupta concluded.
Thus, a deep dive into a restaurateur’s opinion on the factors that determine a restaurant’s fate concludes that it has much to do with location, the originality of the concept, and the ability to design a menu that speaks to its audience. As a diner, I believe a restaurant can make a mark for itself by recognising and filling a gap. One could open a cocktail bar among the thousands that exist in Delhi, or serve gourmet sandwiches at a time when every neighbourhood has one, but only the one that delivers something no one else does or does it differently will be the one I would want to dedicate my outing to.
That said, we also hear from other, more seasoned diners about what passes the test and what fails a restaurant.
The Diner Perspective
Consultant, writer, and food lover, Magandeep Singh speaks both as a diner and a critic. To begin with, he spoke about how a good restaurant that knows its calling and isn’t trying to do it all. “If you serve me Mughlai, South Indian, and Japanese, all under one roof, that is a big red flag,” said Singh.
Lack of consistency in flavour and ingredient quality is another factor that puts him off. Sameer Bawa, a content creator who has dined at restaurants across the country and around the world, agrees. For him, if he can’t return to a restaurant, enjoy the same dishes, and feel the same way as he did the last time he dined, it ruins the experience.
Location matters to both Singh and Bawa. They both agree that they would seldom want to visit a fine-dining restaurant in a crowded mall or a fast-food joint in the middle of an upscale complex.
Singh also speaks about how restaurateurs in India are investing much more in a restaurant’s hardware than in its software. Means: crores are spent on interiors, but they skimp on paying the staff well. “Most places try to cut costs with their staff and servers despite them being the face of the restaurant on a daily basis. Restaurants where the staff is well-trained and warm set the tone right for the food, too,” said Singh.
Bawa agreed and mentioned how service orientation is one of the things that restaurants in India must pick from the rest of the world. “We are the most hospitable country in the world, and I don’t believe that there is any less warmth among our servers, but just the process of service, the etiquette, the knowledge of the menu, and being aware of what the restaurant aims to do, are some things we could still be better at,” said Bawa. Thus, extra time dedicated to staff training becomes important.
Ultimately, the success of a restaurant seems to lie in getting the details right, from the address and menu to the people who bring the experience to life. In a food scene as competitive as India’s, where new spaces are constantly vying for attention, longevity may not come from being the loudest or newest, but from knowing what you stand for and giving diners a reason to return.
