Chennai's first 24x7 drive thru cum dine-in restaurant at Kathipara

The story behind Chennai’s first 24 X 7 Drive in restaurant

There was this buzz early March that the Chief Minister had inaugurated a Public space below the iconic Kathipara Junction and that it was going to house an open retail, food and fun space for Chennai.

We had been approached by the team at Uptown to see if Junior Kuppanna (JK) can put up a restaurant there. We met the visionary behind the space Charan Reddy who was very forthcoming in welcoming JK to be a part of the project. Alls well right. Not exactly — right from customer research, to retail brand feedback and peers in the industry were sceptic about the space doing well.

What we felt positive apart from Uptown team under Charan Reddy was the fact that this is probably one of the most iconic landmarks in Chennai “Kathipara Clover Flyover” and there are thousands who pass this way literally every day. Literally all roads in Chennai lead to kathipara and it is pretty much at the heart of the City.

Although there were positives and negatives with negatives outweighing positives, We knew that this was going to be a gamble. But at JK we decided that if we play the game this time here in this playground, lets rewrite the rules.

We then decided to build a strategy around 2 aspects —

1. Chennaities have always missed Woodlands drive in after it was converted to Semmozhi poonga. We thought since infrastructure can take it, we should make it a Drive in cum restaurant as there is a huge market for the same. Thus came about the Drive in idea and we didnt stop there yet.

2. We have been seeing ourselves or our friends hustle around for good food post 12 midnight. Having to compromise on tastes just to fill our midnight cravings has been the order of the day. We wanted to go one step above and make this restaurant a 24 hours restaurant where tasty food gets served round the clock.

The above 2 if executed well we felt can create an impact to pull crowd to the restaurant albeit in a new format.

We didnt stop there as well, Junior Kuppanna team wanted the space to be a tribute to 2000 years of Tamil Culture. With food being an integral part of our Tamil culture, we also wanted to give a subtle tribute to other aspects that defined Tamil culture and hence the design theme was borne out of that thought.

With the above brief the internal team along with Mr.Kishore and Ms.Harini of Infinity Architects team worked hard with the above concepts in mind to bring these concepts to life within a deadline of 75 days to launch the restaurant, images of which are shared below.

Heres a sneak peak video of the launch -

 The pics of the event —

 

 

 

 

The team that made it happen

 

 

It was apt that the restaurant was launched by Mr.Murugavel Janakiraman Founder CEO Matrimony.com who is also the current Chairman of CII Chennai Zone and is advocating working on creating 24 hours retail and retail in public spaces. He remarked that “Congrats on Junior Kuppanna on being the first in opening a 24 hours drive in restaurant. Many may start in the future but the first will always have been Junior Kuppanna”.

 

 

Others pictures during the lunch

 

 

 

 

The 24 hours menu includes your favourite Seeraga samba mutton biriyani, Chicken biriyani, parottas and 25 other signature dishes that include —
Chicken Pallipalayam, Chicken Chukka, Madurai Mutton, Mutton Kola Urudai, Nalli Chops Fry, Vanjiram fry, Pichu pota nattu kozhi among others.

The first drive in bill was done by Mr.CK Kumaravel Founder CEO of Naturals who relished the biriyani and JK dishes.