America's Burger King enters Pune

After NCR and Mumbai, American burger chain Burger King is all set to open its first store in Pune. Burger King plans for 12 stores in the next two months.

Located at Phoenix Market City on Ahmednagar Road, this will be the company’s 13th restaurant in the country.  After Pune, Burger King will open its first outlet in Bengaluru, followed by restaurants in Chandigarh, Jallandhar, and Ludhiana.

"We have created an entirely new menu for India, and none of the products are from our global portfolio as we wanted to start from scratch. But we are planning to introduce Indian menu to other markets in Asia Pacific region. We do not serve beef or pork meat in our restaurants. Burger King India wishes to innovate further and offer a new experience to consumers and a greater focus needs to be on what we are offering to customers and if that’s resonating", says, Raj Varman, CEO, Burger King India.

Also,  like a majority of its rivals, Burger King has not Indianised the menu but has developed the Indian product from scratch.

He added, "We are having six vegetarian patties made from entirely different base materials, one with mutton, and six options in chicken. The vegetarian and non-vegetarian mix of products is 50:50. We did a complete tour of several cities with a senior team, in places like Chennai, Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Lucknow downstreets. We started the product development process from scratch — we did not carry products from abroad but carried concepts and the cooking platform and ethos that Burger King is known for."

Burger King India has  joined hands with private equity major Everstone Capital for India entry which is a majority stake holder,  Varman owns a small stake and the rest is held by Burger King.  According to Varman, the company is cash rich and could put $80 million into the system.