by Vijaylakshmi
Spirit Forward’s creative force, beverage specialist and bar consultant, Arijit Bose has been associated with some of India’s top bars. But Spirit Forward is something which is close to his heart. Bose spoke to ET HospitalityWorld about his vision and what lies ahead for the bar professional.
“My idea has always been to build bars that I want to go drink at. I also have a huge industry push. How does a bartender or F&B guy become good If he can’t afford to go to nice places? When I was growing up, restaurants and bars were always very elevated and you felt really uncomfortable. When I went out (of India), I noticed that there is a huge balance in the world that has not come to India. So I wanted to create places where I can go for a drink and people of my ilk can drink as well,” Bose said when asked about his thoughts behind creating Spirit Forward.
What was important too was a sense of democracy when it came to the service, it didn’t matter if the customer was an HNI or not, the bar would treat you just the same, he stressed.
Bose, who has travelled the world and worked with brands like Monkey 47 and run bars across Asia said he always had these ideas of what his brands would be like, but never had the money to actually see them become reality—this is before he met the guys who backed him at Spirit Forward.
“I keep saying the business is not product, the business is HR. It is about getting the right people, who can speak well, who are in tune to good service and hospitality. If you’re able to build that, even if you do an average product, will come in. So, focus a lot on HR,” he said when speaking about the F&B industry.
“I’ve been coming to Bengaluru since 2004 and there used to be all of these nice small bars like Opus Lounge, Tavern and 1942—all great places to drink in, but they’re all gone. Everything has become big because of the way licensing and excise work and every time I was coming here, people were taking me to beer bars,” he said about the genesis of Spirit Forward.
This was when Bose began speaking to a lot of people about what it would take to build a small establishment in Bengaluru. Investorant Platforms were keen to be part of the project but it still took 17-18 months of conversations to get things ready, he said.
“They showed me a space which was in an old hotel called Hotel Rama and I felt, if I can do this on Lavelle Road and limit it to a sub 80 pax space—I think we could build a great bar. Why sub 80 pax? Because I want to run it with 12 highly trained, highly efficient people,” he added.
And even though Spirit Forward has been in the news for its uniqueness and has been a success, there are niggles and small issues that Bose as a perfectionist still wants to address.
“Ice is very important to me, and I have been wanting to get a Japanese ice machine,” he said, adding that the question for him was always, “how do we maybe make a bar that can be still successful yet amazing, despite all of these small little issues which are there?”
Meanwhile, Bose is putting together another bar in Goa which he didn’t want to get into details about and is working with WIP (Wine In Progress) by Courtyard, in Bengaluru where he works on a revenue-share model, he added.
“I don’t look for opportunities, I look for the right people to work with,” Bose concluded.
