Flavours Street owes its success to the passion and perseverance of Alfred Kuchi who had started his journey as a chef and entrepreneur by putting up a cart in Koregaon Park in 2006. A couple of years after the cart became popular, Kuchi launched Flavours Street. According to Kuchi, it was he who started serving Chocolate Sandwich in Pune, which went on to become one of his hot-selling items.
Today, Flavours Street has four outlets in different parts of the city. Their first outlet was at Gangadham (Bibvewadi) followed by FC Road, then Treasure Park (Sahakar Nagar) and just a few months back, they have opened their biggest outlet on Baner Road.
They sell around 73 types of vegetarian sandwiches including Mumbai Masala, Cheese Tomato Garlic, Cheese Chocolate, Corn Cheese Chutney, Cheese Chilly, Beans Garlic and others. But the Baner outlet has sandwiches, pizzas (Classic Margerita, Grilled Herb Veg), nachos, loaded fries, pasta, Maggi, Tawa Pulav, Pav Bhaji, milkshakes, juices and more too.
Kuchi calls the Baner eatery his dream project. “I have paid a lot of money to get this place,”he says. When we dropped in at the outlet, we met some of his loyal customers who had come all the way from Bibvewadi to taste the food, which is not only value for money but also high on taste quotient. We specially loved the Veg Cheese Sandwich, which was filling.
Apart from the food, Kuchi’s journey from Goa to Pune is inspiring and interesting too. Shedding light on it, he says, “At a very young age, I lost my parents. After doing odd jobs here and there, I shifted to Pune at the age of 17. I had started working from the age of 10 to support myself. I used to work in the hotel industry where from cleaning utensils to rooms, I did everything.”
After shifting to Pune, Kuchi continued doing odd jobs at various restaurants and hotels. “I do not have any formal training in cooking but I used to cook well. In fact, I used to make pancakes back in Goa, which were loved by all. I saved money and with that, I started my cart,”he recalls, adding, “I always had an inclination towards making sandwiches. The recipes that you find at Flavours Street are all mine. I keep introducing new things every few months.”
The enterprising man says he takes pride in the fact that he was the one to start chocolate sandwiches, and claims that because of that he is very popular today. “I wanted to get into making Chocolate Mousse but I wasn’t sure if people would have the mousse made on a cart. So, I thought of adding chocolate to the bread and the idea worked. Slowly, people started accepting the dish,” he says.
He attributes a major part of success to his wife Almas, who has been his pillar of strength throughout the journey.
The restaurateur believes that along with serving good food, one also needs to maintain healthy relationship with one’s customers. “I have customers who have been regularly coming to my outlet for the last 15 years. I think the reason we have worked is because I put my heart and soul into the food I serve and I maintain a very personal relationship with my customers. Even today, I reach my centralised kitchen at 7 am and personally prepare the masalas.”
Most interestingly, Kuchi refuses to rest on his laurels and says that he plans to achieve a lot more in future.
