Top #3 Trends in The Restaurant Industry to Watch for in 2017 Somick Goswami, Partner, PwC India shared the restaurant industry trends that will make the biggest impact in the coming year.

A restaurant today is not just a place to eat out simply because people love experimenting with food. It gives an opportunity to socialise, relax and more. The restaurant industry in India is mainly driven by the young population which opts for casual dining even when they want to catch up with friends. Food is a core component of the restaurant experience that will continue to have a major impact on customer satisfaction. There are a number of factors that will cause existing restaurant trends to increase in building up the new trends.

BIZ Experiences India caught up with Somick Goswami, Partner, PwC India during the Restaurant India 2016 show, to identify the restaurant industry trends that will make the biggest impact in the coming year.

" If you look at the customer base there is a huge amount of young millennials coming up who are actually pretty well travelled. They want to experiment so they are looking for something new. So, how do we give them a different experience in the time will be something which will be a trending food as well And that is where a lot of fine dining or local cuisine needs to experiment and create that difference because the youth are a bit impatient by nature," Somick said.

" For example, they would go to a place once or twice but the third time they will think about going back to the same place.They feel that we didn't see a difference last time so restaurants need to ensure that they are thinking and doing something new in terms of trying to give the new experiences to customers," he added.

Somick feels a restaurant should ensure right kind of an ambience so the place doesn't feel boring to customers.

"There is a certain age group who would like to go to a place where they can sit down chat, without much noise and spend the quality time. The whole industry is today innovating a lot and trying to ensure that how different kinds of customers can be serviced. With technology coming in, people are trying to order online and do takeaways. But how do you ensure that the footfall in the restaurants doesn't go down because you have invested a lot? That's again an area where the food and dining industry are thinking of not losing out all the age group," he said.

According to him, the third trend is the lost local cuisine concept, which was that coming back a lot.

" Being a bong, I eat a bong food every day at home. But if I have to go out and eat same bong food in Kolkata I will get something different. Apart from this people are becoming health conscious so you see a lot of food coming up. These will all become demand size drivers as you go to this business.If you are in this business you need to take care of a lot of things," he explained .

(With Inputs From Sneha Banerjee)