19 years, 11 cafes, no advertising
Fawzia and Aseem have built an iconic cafe chain in Delhi-NCR
he Big Chill was also the second act of Fawzia and Aseem. Fauzia was a social worker, while Aseem was an army officer. Both started The Big Chill as a homemade ice cream parlour. Today it is a chain of eleven restaurants in Delhi-NCR.
Fawzia is from Pakistan. Aseem and she started The Big Chill in the year 2000. They designed the cafe and its interiors from the wall posters to the furniture. After the first three months they started to sell food. They offered Italian food as it did not require deep freezers, and there were fewer Italian restaurants. Today the menu has more than hundred items. By 2005 its revenue had grown to INR 1.5cr.
Aseem did not expect it to become such a success: We had little idea of consciously building a brand when we started The Big Chill. It seems to have evolved into something that we could not have imagined in our wildest dreams! We had modestly thought of a stand-alone single outlet but the overwhelming response we received led us to develop the concept that we have today. Our growth and development has been very organic and closely connected to our customer base.
The Big Chill is successful by focussing on good food and being original. It doesn’t spend money on advertising and social media. It has grown through word of mouth.
