Sodexho USA
Headquarters: Gaithersburg, Maryland
Richard Arakelian is national executive chef for Sodexho Corporate Services. Recently he worked with New York restaurateur and consultant Suvir Saran to introduce Indian dishes to Sodexho menus, in response to clients' growing interest in Indian food.
On partnering
I met Suvir Saran (of Devi restaurant in New York City) last year in his restaurant. One of my colleagues brought me there to meet him. I asked him if he would like to come speak and do a demo at our national chef conference because I thought Indian food was going to be hot shortly. He did a spectacular job, so we signed him to a contract to be our international development partner, developing Indian concepts for Divali, the Hindu Festival of Light at the end of October. And he's helping us develop an Indian brand, a quick-casual retail concept which will go international.
Why the effort?
It keeps our chefs engaged through continuous learning, while it keeps our customers excited and not bored. Our customers are with us from Monday through Friday, so we have to be prepared to make their palates dance. Our competitors aren't Aramark and Compass; our competition is the street. That's why we have developed our retail strategy.
About the festival promotion
The Festival of Lights promotion runs for two weeks at the end of October throughout our whole B & I (business and institutions) division. The menu includes a line of Bombay-New York frankies. A frankie is a British term, from when Britain occupied India. It's an Indian -style flatbread wrap sandwich. Ours have fillings like lamb vindaloo, beef vindaloo, grilled chicken, and tofu, topped with raita and chutney. We're doing an Indian salad with tomato, cucumber and mint, and a green grape raita with yogurt, mint and red onion. And if you don't want the frankie, you can have the same topping as a biriyani bowl with rice.
On training staff in ethnic cooking
I've had Suvir going around to accounts around the country doing guest chef appearances, preparing food onsite, teaching our chefs, signing cookbooks and meeting guests. It's amazing what that's done. Our chefs and clients see that Indian food is approachable and easy, that the flavors are acceptable.
Chief challenges
Sourcing of ingredients. In development, we tried to mitigate the problem as much as possible. We worked with manufacturers to make sure we had products acceptable to Suvir, and we eliminated the item from some recipes where it wasn't necessary. Curry leaves were a challenge, but we found a few vendors around the country. It wasn't as much of an issue as I thought. If you're willing to put the effort into it, you can get anything.
Getting to yes
Tasting is key. We do sampling, and we made it more palatable as far as the heat levels. But you'd be amazed at how the Indians relate to what we've done. These are foods their grandmothers cooked. Indians have brought their families to our guest chef events—their mother-in-law and father-in-law. My e-mail box is cluttered with comments about how great these events were. We also have promotional pieces we've put together: table tents, posters, signage. Customers are very adventurous. It's not the way it was even 10 years ago.