Platform 65: Finally, your food is on track
Hyderabad: Everyone loves food. Everyone cherishes train journeys. Now imagine a restaurant where a train brings food from the kitchen to your table. That’s just the concept that Hyderabad-based Platform 65 has attempted and succeeded, creating India’s largest locomotive toy-train-themed restaurant chain. Platform 65 offers a complete train-based environment at its flagship restaurant at KPHB […]
Hyderabad: Everyone loves food. Everyone cherishes train journeys. Now imagine a restaurant where a train brings food from the kitchen to your table. That’s just the concept that Hyderabad-based Platform 65 has attempted and succeeded, creating India’s largest locomotive toy-train-themed restaurant chain.
Platform 65 offers a complete train-based environment at its flagship restaurant at KPHB spread across a 5,500 sq ft area, which is transformed into a railway zone. With enough space to seat more than 200 people, and a section to host special events, this restaurant provides food from Chinese, North Indian, Telangana and Andhra cuisines and an interesting ambience.
The tables have mini railway tracks, and the decor is set up such that each table has a station name such as Nizamabad, Kamareddy, Warangal, Hyderabad, Sangareddy, Vijayawada, Tenali, Guntur, Rajahmundry, Trivandrum and Ahmedabad. Adequate measures are taken by the team for proper maintenance of tracks and trains.
Platform 65 has so far set up six restaurants in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh including four in Hyderabad. The flagship restaurant at KPHB, which began operations in November 2019, is company-owned while the remaining are franchisee owned but company operated.
Sadgun Patha, MD & co-founder told Telangana Today, “Every month, we keep adding dishes to our menu at all our restaurants besides conducting a variety of food festivals. Despite Covid, the restaurants didn’t witness any slowdown as the model was train-based and ensured a contactless delivery. There is no human intervention between the kitchen and the table. This became a big hit.”
“Each of our outlets have a different focus. For instance, at KPHB the theme is railways stations and waterfalls, at Kompally the theme is around mountains, and at Dilsukhnagar the theme is around palaces. Our Kondapur outlet is also unique. At each outlet, we try to offer a different experience to our customers. Food and service at all the outlets are given high priority. We are seeing about 40 per cent repeat customers,” he added.
Expansion plan
Platform 65 is planning to expand aggressively by adding 4-6 new restaurants by the end of 2022 and another eight in 2023. The company will foray into Warangal, Bengaluru, and Rajahmundry within next three months. It also sees opportunities to enter Chennai and Tirupati in 2022, and then explore northern markets in 2023.
He added, “In the span of over two years, we have opened six restaurants spread across Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, and Vijayawada. We see scope to replicate our model in many more cities.”
The company has around 150 employees with each branch having around 25-30 employees. It plans to continue to try out new themes and designs in the future restaurants that will come up pan-India. The company is open to the model where a new outlet is created from zero as well as converting an existing restaurant into a Platform 65 themed outlet.
Sadgun Patha informed, “Platform 65 will also try out restaurants in large and mini formats. In tier-2 and tier-3 cities, there is scope to come out with mini format restaurants. We also see that takeaways will see an increase through our delivery app.”
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