'Courtesy discounts': Say please, thank you & get discounts at Hyd's Dakshin-5 restaurant
If you walk into Dakshin-5 restaurant in Khajaguda in Hyderabad and order a vegetarian thali, you end up paying its full price of Rs. 165 plus taxes. But if you say “A thali please”, you will get a discount of Rs. 15.
By Newsmeter Network Published on 6 March 2022 7:27 AM GMT
Hyderabad: If you walk into Dakshin-5 restaurant in Khajaguda in Hyderabad and order a vegetarian thali, you end up paying its full price of Rs. 165 plus taxes. But if you say "A thali please", you will get a discount of Rs. 15. Going a step further, if you greet the staff, say good afternoon, and say please, you will get a discount of Rs. 30.
Sounds cool, right?
But what if I am a non-vegetarian? Don't worry, the same applies to non-vegetarian thali also. Say "A non-veg thali please" and get a discount of Rs. 20 on the thali that is originally priced at Rs. 275. If you are a warmer person and say good afternoon, it is going to fetch you a discount of Rs. 35.
Dakshin-5, a newly-opened Hyderabadi boutique restaurant located in Khajaguda in Hyderabad, has come up with a novel idea, 'courtesy discounts'.
The restaurant serves most of the famous dishes of all the five south Indian states – Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu.
"The restaurant business is routine and repetitive. The staff is busy performing myriad tasks due to which sometimes they may not serve customers to their satisfaction. It may annoy guests. This is an initiative that I have seen in the west. It dispels unpleasantness and will help forge food relationships and cultivate a win-win culture," says Sanjeev Kumar, a managing partner of Dakshin-5.
He adds, "We are in the service industry. We are taught from the very first day to treat guests like god. Similarly, though we serve, we are not servants. We also need to be treated well. Many times, restaurant staff are badly treated for no fault of theirs. The common courtesy has become uncommon, and we are trying to bring back that culture"
Noting how such common gestures have become uncommon these days, Solanki, another managing partner of Dakshin-5, says, "The restaurant has put up a board very prominently announcing this initiative, probably a first-of-its-kind in the restaurant industry. This will not only encourage customers to be more polite, but it is also putting a smile on their faces."
The same management has also inaugurated another restaurant called The Wok Nation, a pan-Asian restaurant that brings special dishes from different cultures of Asia.
Revering delivery boys, elderly
To mark the launch of the two restaurants, they felicitated food delivery workers. Fifty delivery executives in the Manikonda area were chosen. One of them, Adarsh, was in tears, seeing the rare honour meted out to him and his friends. "The city has well over 30,000 delivery boys who have done a great service during the lockdown. That is why we chose to invite some of them and felicitate them," said Sanjeev.
The restaurant has also hit upon yet another unique idea, 'Elder the Better', to encourage more people to come out and dine. It is a special offer for the next one month and is exclusively for senior citizens of the city. Any diner accompanied by an elderly person will get a flat discount on the bill equivalent to the age of the most elderly person in the group.
