It was 2003, and I was resting due to a bulging disc in my spine. In the hotel kitchen where I worked, I often carried the heaviest loads to prove that I could do it all. I had had a fall too, and hurt my back in the process. My doctor had suggested that I find an alternate career. The Oberoi management offered to find me another position, but I did not want a desk job. I wanted to remain in the kitchen, where I had been happy and content. I was 24 years old then.
My back injury had forced me to pause, but it had set my family in action. One day, as I lay in bed at home, my father Farokh and sister Tina, who was visiting from London, decided it was a good time to start the discussion. I remember only snatches of that initial conversation. I recall saying that I would think about starting a business, but I was on strong medication due to the pain and I fell asleep mid-way. When I woke up, they were still in the room, discussing our initial investment, sales and break-even levels. I didn’t even know what break-even was at that time.
My mum Kamal was excited about starting something small for ourselves. She ran a cake and dessert business from home and, at times, she would take orders, but then decide to go out with her friends instead and ask us to make the desserts. Tina and I grew up wrapping chocolates and making desserts. My childhood memories are built on this foundation of homemade cakes and chocolates, and our business idea was to create a dessert destination.
The four of us thought that starting our business would be more of the same, on a slightly bigger scale but not very different from what we were already doing from home. We didn’t have a business growth plan or any real plan. There was no master strategy to create a brand, chain or empire. At the outset, we just got going and then carried on.
By September 2003, I quit my job at the Oberoi and a year later, in October 2004, we opened our first outlet in Cusrow Baug, Colaba.
Things moved forward when we heard that a doctor’s clinic in Cusrow Baug, Colaba was on the market. The doctor was well known in the gated Parsi community, which is where it was situated. The place was near our home and a stone’s throw away from my grandparents’ flat, which was to become our kitchen. We acquired the property and then there was no looking back.
Dad funded all the initial costs of starting our business; he paid to acquire the space, bakery equipment, floor tiles, and plates, cups and glasses. We were on a limited budget and so we designed the layout and interiors ourselves.
We soon discovered that this was not our wisest move. We did not plan the workflows, of how our guests and staff would move within our small space. I wanted wooden flooring and loved the rustic look of a brick wall. I was advised that a wooden floor was impractical for a high traffic area, but I went ahead with it anyway.
The experts were right and I was wrong. The floor got scratched within days and looked shabby in weeks. I loved the brick wall for all the time that we had it, as I thought it gave a warm feel to the place. It was only many years later that it was explained to me that a red brick wall was totally wrong for a patisserie.
Our home business of chocolates, cakes, desserts and brownies served as the blueprint for what we were going to make and offer. My best friend Dilshad and I spent hours discussing the food, and all my products were tried-and-tested by her. If an item didn’t pass Dilly’s palette test, it didn’t make it to the menu.
We started out as a dessert destination and have evolved over the years, adding sandwiches and savouries in response to many requests. We are still primarily a cake and dessert destination, and some of the products on our menu today are those that we started with 15 years ago. Our truffle cake, chocolate chip brownie, walnut brownie, mawa cake and chocolate orange mousse cake are just a few examples.
Our vision began to take shape, but we struggled to choose a name for our business. We considered Tai (a combination of Tina and Kainaz), Square Circle and Divine Calories. Tina pitched “Kainaz Messman” too, as she wanted to build the business brand around my identity, but I was totally against that.
Tina was working at a broking firm in London at the time and told Michael Dann, a sugar broker and Head of Commodities Trading, about our plans to start this business and he suggested the name “Theobroma”. Theobroma is derived from the Greek words “theos” (god) and “broma” (food). It translates to “food of the gods”. It is also the botanical name of the cocoa plant.
Most local bakeries at the time had “cookie”, “brownie” or “baker” in their name. Theobroma was unusual, weird even. At first we were unsure ourselves, and all our friends advised us against using this name. No one liked it, few could pronounce it, and nobody knew what it meant. Over time, Theobroma grew on us and we made the unconventional choice. Fortunately, it worked to our advantage. Everyone was forced to put effort into remembering, pronouncing and spelling our name.
“Theobroma’ is not easy to forget. I will forever be grateful to Michael for suggesting the name. Of course, we still get called all sorts of weird names, with “The Obama” probably being the most common.
We opened on Dussehra day in 2004, with four small tables, hope and a prayer. We didn’t know what to expect. Would we recover the cost of starting our business? Would there be enough customers to fill the tiny tables that we had ordered? We set out on this journey agreeing to make only what we liked to eat ourselves. We promised to make it well, and to keep it simple. In the days leading up to the launch, we made many lists, of what to make and what to cut out.
Mum is a worrier by nature; she didn’t sleep for many nights leading up to the big day. Vikram Oberoi had called mum to say that I had a great future with the Oberoi group and that leaving the hotel was a big mistake. PRS Oberoi had already offered to send me to Vienna for training. One of mum’s friends, who was in a similar business, estimated that our average turnover would be Rs 8,000 per day. Mum burst into tears on hearing this.
By our calculations, we needed a sale of Rs 22,000 per day to break even. Mum clung to the words of our architect Parvez Chavda, the one person who told her not to worry and who anticipated there would be a queue outside. He was right. Our little cake shop took off like no other. Soon, it was packed to the gills and we had people queuing up outside. We fondly remember the time as “sweet chaos”.
Ironically, I missed the opening moment. We were meant to open at 11 am, but this got delayed because the flooring was still being laid. I was at the kitchen that was at my grandmother’s flat a few lanes away, and it was mayhem.
We were running around in circles, in the tiny space, trying to get our products out of the door. By 2 pm, some of the shelves were filled, but many remained empty. Mum, Dad and Tina cut the ribbon to mark our opening. I stayed on at the kitchen, working, shouting and directing everyone. We were completely disorganised, we had no order sheet or plan, and we were just making what we could.
A few hours after we had opened, I received a call from Tina saying that our shelves were completely empty and that I had to send more products across. We finished the desserts that we had started making for the following day and sent them out too. I rushed home for a quick shower and reached the outlet at around 8 pm. We had invited a few of our family and friends to see the place. I was exhausted and could barely stand, but I smiled and greeted everyone.
We had obtained a liquor licence for that evening, and ordered many bottles of wine for our invited guests. The bottles were refrigerated in the pantry behind. At one point in the evening, we went into the pantry to find the staff had helped themselves to all our liquor and were making merry at the back. Mum’s driver was so drunk that he was unable to speak, let alone drive. We were all too exhausted to do anything so Tina, Dilly, Dilly’s husband Karan, and I went around the corner to Ling’s Pavilion for a celebratory dinner.
This was the beginning of a very gruelling and difficult time, but we continued to draw strength from the response we were getting. There was one guest – we can’t recall his name, but remember that he introduced himself as the manager of Dalchini restaurant in Wimbledon Park, London – who bought a few products, spoke to Tina and left. An hour or two later, he came back with a bamboo plant for us and told us where to place it. He said that it would bring us luck and wished for our business to do well.
I became a chef by choice, but my family made me an entrepreneur. They believed that they gave me a nudge in that direction, but it was a big push in reality. God has been merciful. On the day we first started, and on many others yet to come, we sold out within a few hours.
Excerpted with permission from Baking a Dream: The Theobroma Story, Kainaz Messman Harchandrai with Tina Messman Wykes, to be published by HarperCollins India.