Six Sigma Shettys

The Shettys, who run over 10,000 'Udupi' restaurants in the western and southern part of India (now some in UK and US too), have achieved Six Sigma quality level--without the faintest idea what Six Sigma is!

Six Sigma, simply put, is a measure of how good a process is. A manufacturing process, for example, running at Six Sigma level produces no defective products (or rather produces a miniscule 3.4 defects per million), where a defect is anything that is outside of customer specification / expectation.

Anyone who has been to Vaishali restaurant in Pune, Shivkrupa in Thane or Shivsagar in Mumbai will attest to the fact that defects are indeed probably less than 3.4 per million of the dishes these Shettys serve in their restuarants across India.

While hundreds of large, multinational organisations--many of them Fortune 500 companies--are still struggling to achieve Six Sigma twenty years after it was formulated, how did a bunch of south Indian people, ignorant of any formal quality processes, do it? Just like that.

Apart from the uniform quality level of the food these joints serve, it is also amazing that they all have the same look and feel, as if they all belong to a McDonalds-like chain.

Whenever any middle or upper-middle-class Indian in Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka or Kerala, wants to have a quick snack or a reasonable, hygienic meal outside, he or she steps into one of these 'Udupi' restaurants. The establishment typically has a one-word name (max two words), a pleasant interior, clean tables, shining floor and clean crockery. The orders are taken ASAP and good, tasty food is delivered almost instantly.

Most of these restaurants are vegetarian. There is typically a small outdoor section, sometimes an air-conditioned section inside and definitely a marble-counter, where a bespectacled gentleman is counting money while a mildly-meancing, mustachioed man stands next to him keeping a watch on all the goings-on in the restaurant. A wink or a nod from him is enough to send one of the waiters scurrying to a table where a customer might be just beginning to get irritated by a couple of minutes' wait.

These restaurants, whicever state they are run in, leave you with the same satisfactory experience that makes you keep going back. Not a voice is ever raised by any those working there. The food is reasonably priced, albeit a little on the higher side for the ones in good locations with better interiors. They seem to have an endless supply of good, decent, hard-working and unambitious waiters (I have seen some of them working as waiters for more than a decade). Makes you wonder what the secret of their success is.

A study of the 'Udupi' restaurants is actually a study into the culture of a united, ambitious and enterprising--yet low-profile--community, referred to as the Shettys, of whom we all know Shilpa and Suniel because of their Bollywood connection (Suniel too owns a bunch of such restuarnts). However, Shetty is just the most common surname amoung this community of people who are actually 'Bunts.' (BTW, Aishwarya Rai is also a bunt).

The Bunt people belong to the Dakshin Kanada and Udupi districts of Karnataka (hence, the first few eateries started by them were known as Udupi restaurants, and the name stuck on). They speak Tulu, a cross between Kannada and Tamil. Until a few years ago, the bunts lived in large joint families--sometimes running into hundreds--owning large tracts of farmland. With the government seizing land under the Land Ceiling Act, they were forced to seek newer pastures. Some of them moved to Mumbai and opened restaurants, and now they own them in several states, plus some 4-star hotels.

As one restaurant succeeds, the Shetty owner hands over its reins to a close associate or relative and moves on to open another one in yet another prominent location or a new town. He also takes with him some of his experienced waiters and cooks to the new one, while more young men from his village--or neighbouring ones--back fill their places. The old staff then replicates the recipes, cooking, serving and cleaning processes, while training new cooks and waiters brought in from back home, thus extending the 'Shetty process' efficiency to the new eatery.

All the Shettys purchase most of their kitchen appliances, utensils, crockery, etc. in bulk from the same supplier (who again is from their own community and knows their requirements well). The interiors are done by trusted contractors, who know their decoration style initimately and keep replicating it across locations, with their teams and income growing along with that of the Shettys.

Whenever one bunt owner is in trouble, financial or otherwise, he approaches the community elders--who meet at least once a month--and they lend a hand to help him with the promise that he will reciprocate when it is someone else's turn. It is this community support which has helped them acquire a lot of muscle which allows them to handle problems when they face nasty situations while running bars (the Shettys ran the largest number of dance bars in Mumbai until they were banned and even today run most of the regular bars).

The tight-knit nature of this enterprising community, the motivation to amass wealth--while keeping a low profile in the societies they live in--has transformed these hitherto hinterlanders into highly successful entrepreneurs across half the country's cities.

And the majority of them are restarauteurs who are doing their business in a style that would have put on the face of Edward Deming (the late founding father of quality management) a great smile.