Au Bon Pain to open 55 cafes in next 18 months

Au Bon Pain, RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group-led café bakery chain, is planning to open 55 cafés across the country over the next 18 months.

"We had announced expansion last year, but we later decided to focus on meeting customers' expectations first. We now are ready for a take-off," said Avarna Jain, founder of Au Bon Pain and daughter of RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group Chairman, Sanjiv Goenka.

At present, the café bakery chain has 20 outlets in Bengaluru, four in NCR and three in Kolkata.

Primarily, the chain will focus on cities like Hyderabad and Chennai, besides adding outlets in Kolkata and the Delhi region, added Jain. The chain will also have new Au Bon Pain café restaurants in Ballygunge, New Alipore and Alipore.

With annual turnover of Rs 17 crores, the chain has now realigned its strategy like localising menus and leveraging the franchisee route to expand. Hence, the company is aiming an increased turnover of Rs 24 crore by the end of the current fiscal.

"We are already localising the menus, on Bengali New Year we have introduced baked chicken wings, cucumber lemonade, sparkling nutty espresso and a few more," informed Jain.