Why there is no large chain of Indian food establishment like Bella Italia or Cafe Rouge.. in the UK ?

The first answer is that they not fast enough. 

All we need is a fast, eye appealing, location and attentive  customer service along with a decent food. Profitable business model. Although Chicken Tikka Masala is now recognised as the national dish in the UK but there are no national chains.

Indian food isn't fast yet and not going to be until the team of expert make it happen before too late.

Best I can see is that can be slow cook fast service so we don’t lose taste and flavour on sauces meat and chicken. The vegetable and seafood can be a la carte or cook  just before serve. Prepare in advance and order to make. Basically reheating and finishing per customer demand such and mild, hot, extra sauce 

Prepare in advance and order to make. Basically reheating and finishing per customer demand such and mild, hot, extra sauce.

Most of the Indian food's business model is the small family-run restaurant and claims secret family recipes that where the problem comes  and also everyone tries to be unique not like if we eat any Italian restaurant more or less tomato salsa  is same but Tikka Masala taste different in every single different establishment.  There is no standardisation like French got 5 base  sauces and make out of derivative sauces with the construct and  deconstruct some of those. 

We did same in The Bombay Bicycle Club, it was 17 branches. Basically, we use to have 2 base sauce and two way to batch cooking. one for vegetarian  meat and another one for non-vegetarian with one dominating spice pairing. All tandoori marination basic was same one spice mix on the  end use to make the difference.we use to  create about 45 difference dishes adding different spice mix, cream, lemon and soo on.

French food is extremely varied as each region has its own distinctive cuisine and style, prepared from local producers and determined by the seasons. For example, the Alps region is known for its warming cheese-focused dishes such as fondue and raclette, Provencal food embraces olive oils, fresh tomatoes and wild herbs, and in Normandy, the food is rich with butter and crème Fraiche, balanced by apples.

Exactly same goes to Indian food. Noth Indian style food based on rich, dairy, butter accompanied with naan roti chapati.Similarly  south Indian food mainly  coconut base flavoured with curry leaves flavoured rice, vegetable based accompanied  lentil or rice based bread and same as other regional cuisine specialised on their specialised ingredients.

I'm just trying to compare above two cuisines in term of product standardisation and figure out myself where they are and where we are now. We have the better history than them but  we just left behind just because of product standardisation.

Precise recipes,  right aromatic spice additions to make different  sauces and industrialise the cooking process to a minute and counting every second  level and still manage to retain the taste and flavour to serve quickly. That’s what Indian restaurant have to do and keep in simple so any chefs can cook it.

To attract any chefs in Indian food establish  we need to create platforms such as  flexible working hours,  good rate of pay, holidays, safe working environment and better future same as Nando or Wagamama or even better to attract more youth and local.

Apprentice, train to jobless people from job centre using government grant on training and sending free courses from the government, encouraging to take online government funded courses are the best option. 

Indian cuisine mean huge, north, south basically  22 regions got 22 type different cuisine and they have specialised spice mix cooking method and specialised chef. That specialise chef mean if we want to cover 2 cuisines we need to put two specialised chefs.

That’s a big problem for Indian restaurants moving forward. They will have to find a way of creating the food without having the too many skilled chefs, skilled chef doing the non-skill job, not using a simple machine to chop the onion  that will impact to final cost to complete Wagamama, Nandoos of a similar type of food establish. 

My experience says if Indian restaurant wants to go for chain has to have production kitchen, precise recipes, fix supplier and quality monitoring procedure from farm to fork,  product specification, menu spec, training plan, construction and deconstruction of recipes. 

Also using modern technique and equipment to beef up cooking process such as brat pan, steamer, smoker, such as tortilla maker to make roti and  chapatti simple example if we use crepe maker to make dosa so anyone can make it with short training  otherwise we need to have south Indian cuisine specialised chef. 

Simple standard equipment makes different and standardisation of the product like the deep fryer. Let's say if we fix the size  and shape of onion bhaji.We can easily fix cooking time and temperature after some batch of product trail but I recently found one restaurant in centre London using the pot of oil for deep fry and curiously asked Head Chef.  One off or regular process, without any hesitation, replied it  is every day.

Most of the cases, when Head chef changes, recipes and taste changes because there is no spec or any written data to follow what poor chef will do? 

Also, recipes are not all the time going to be right, depend on when we set up recipes, what varieties of spices used and  especially chilli and most of the aromatic spices, is it the same origin,

is it from the same season?  .Recipes just say 1 tsp or 2.5 gm of something. It is the natural product so we need to set up tasting panel and cross check, update recipes, cross training, need to be placed in the system basically such as kitchen operation manual start with farm to finish on the fork and furthermore where that wastage will go such as recyclable packaging bin or standard bin. 

In terms of food, keep meat, chicken or fish same at least change the vegetable per season with keeping same sauce. If we want to grow that I strongly suggest not to use ready made paste and spice mix otherwise, it will be same as next door. I see most of small restaurant uses tikka paste, balti paste or nonsense paste so there are no exclusive taste others and that perception spread to the whole cuisine. 

At least, don’t use frozen vegetable and from the  supermarket wherever we buy it is standard product and just different branding most of case and customer easily figure out as they buy from the same place as they are not going to be the different part of the world. 

Keep simple and precise taste and cooking process.

Some  dishes from the menu have to keep in line with current market trends by quick introducing special, healthy menu as much as possible introducing  like summer for the yoghurt ( sound interesting than milk  )  shake, chat, grill, bbq and light dishes  in summer. Soup,  spicy, ragout dishes for winter and quickly catch up any media attention, quick add and remove dishes or ingredient to business menu mould   per media attention, news, articles from a public health body, the government body.  

Recent bad media such as a cheap cut of beef were using instead lamb, dirty kitchen, cockroaches and mouses in the kitchen,  immigration issue  stereotype like is hot and spicy, unhealthy food, colour and sugar laden food  also some percentage affected. 

Also, most of supermarket doing the better standard of  food and producing per best chef from country recipes and guarantee ingredient list ( except horse meat scandal ) this is also killer for the Indian restaurant. 

 Wagamama and Nandoo do business in lunch and dinner or any time of day so we need to make a menu which can be fit for same principal so It will change the whole conception of Indian food and educate the customer on above all. It should be suited to any age and type and time  and location. 

If we follow above all it will  automatically affordable so it will go to need  market, not the luxury. 

I wrote all from experience as Group Executive Head Chef 17 branch the Bombay Bicycle Club  , Development Chef of Do & Co doing research , development , shows and  presentations about 68 global airline and  doing high profile global  events such and formula 1 , Rolex master event , Chelsea flower show and doing multi cuisine , Euro Cup , Championship final  working with one of expert team from world.

If anyone want to add any comment please most welcome to make it  for better future of Indian food,  Chef & business. The Indian mean for me is again Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Bhutan.

I took the above establish name from my personal list of chain  from London.The quality of food, good service  less damage in the pocket are three best combinations to repeat same place week in and week out.