Part 2: Impresario's Riyaaz Amlani on digital landlords, doers & divas, and why delivery will never eat dine-in
About this episode
Riyaaz Amlani discusses the evolving landscape of the restaurant industry, focusing on the relationship with delivery aggregators and the distinction between dine-in and delivery services.
Part 2 moves from the journey to the operating philosophy. Riyaaz Amlani unpacks his evolving stance on the aggregators — from resistance to "uneasy truce" — and the hard lesson that restaurateurs who send guests to Zomato and Swiggy have only themselves to blame. He argues delivery and dine-in are two different businesses, lays out his ambition to turn Impresario into a full-service-restaurant platform, and gets personal on hiring, Gen Alpha kids, weekends, and why his life scores 9.9 out of 10. CHAPTERS 00:00 Recap and what's ahead: aggregators, the platform, the missing 0.1 01:48 "Digital landlords": Zomato & Swiggy, then and now 02:47 From resistance to cohabitation; how aggregators trained demand 05:24 Owning the customer; the cross-sector aggregator tension 07:04 The Booking.com / Hotels.com parallel and how hotels fought back 09:41 Build your own loyalty — don't blame the aggregator 10:09 Delivery vs dine-in: two completely different businesses 13:09 Restaurants beat the movies; lessons from raising VC/PE 16:34 Growth math: IRR, 20-25% stable growth, the late-stage problem 17:45 What motivates him: reading a city and its community 18:56 Curiosity over the "5 people"…
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- Part 1: Saahil Goel of Shiprocket on rebuilding the same company three times, the $4 million he was told to take or leave and why in India you sell outcomes, not software
- Part 1: Impresario's Riyaaz Amlani on Mocha, "Handmade," four near-deaths and 25 years of building places to be
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