Serving smiles: from heart to table

NIROOP PRABHAKAR owns and runs the restaurant 615chutney in Nashville, Tennessee. 615chutney started as the only Indian food truck serving vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free South Indian food. Niroop’s goal was to bring South Indian cuisine to the US. He believes that customer service is the key. The voices of his customers and employees matter to him. Here he is interviewed by the Heartfulness Wellness Team.

Q: Can you please share your journey from India to the US and how you started 615chutney?

NP: My dad used to say, you can live without anything else but you cannot live without food. That inspired me to get into this noble art of serving food and making good food accessible to everybody. The journey of my food business started with meeting family, eating food like a feast, and sharing love and affection with all mycousins, uncles and aunts.

At the end of the day, I wanted to make sure that food was being served with love and the hope that tomorrow is going to be a better day. I was born and raised in Tamil Nadu, then moved to the US in 2008, and ended up in Tennessee. Both states have the initials TN. Well, 615chutney was born. 

The main goal is to give authentic South Indian food to the southern part of the country, and give it in a special way with good customer service. I empathize with my customers and make sure that my employees are happy when they’re serving the food.

Q: The way you connect with your customers through your service is fascinating. What is the reason for reducing the number of seats in your restaurant?

NP: Initially, the business started as a food truck and I was serving vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free food which is nothing but the basics of South Indian cuisine—idli, dosa, vada, and pongal.

With gluten-free being the future of food, I was able to align my products with whatever the customers wanted. In 2019, we started a brick-and-mortar setup. In a couple of years, the area was hit by a tornado, then Covid-19.

Covid helped us think out of the box. I moved to a different location and reduced the number of seats, making sure I accommodated as many guests as possible but at the same time allowing time to talk to everybody individually.

Business is all about relationships, and when it comes to the food business, hospitality is key. In Tamil we say “Virunthombal”and hospitality is in our DNA in the south of India. In the south of the United States, I feel at home just by giving southern hospitality. Of late, hospitality has become zero in the Hospitality industry. We have to revive that.

There's a reason why I connect with the guests who eat in my restaurant. Reducing the seats has given me ample time to talk to everybody individually. Yes, it’s difficult to remember a person by his or her name, but every employee of my restaurant knows every customer, and we believe that every customer is a celebrity.Everybody is treated equally and everybody eats the same food. 

The goal for 615chutney was to make sure that everybody has access to good food served with love. 

Q: Beautiful concept! As we say in Indian culture, “Atithi devo bhava,” we have to give from our hearts. Once in the Nashville Voyager magazine, you mentioned, “Do good as much as you can. If you can’t do good then at least don’t do bad.” What inspired you to say that?

NP: My dad always said it. I don’t know for what reason, but it went deep into my heart. With anything I do, I make sure there is a good outcome.

Everybody has different circumstances, everybody cannot be in the same situation as you are in. My dad was a banker, and he used one word a lot—empathize. Put yourself in their shoes and see what they are going through.

Despite what they are going through, they have taken the time to drive to your restaurant. They’ve looked at your restaurant at least ten times. They have heard about you and they’ve seen your pictures, and when you’re giving food that they can cook at home, what makes your restaurant stand out? What makes your food different? So that is when I realized that customer service is key. Whoever comes, whatever situation they are in, make sure that you do your best and make sure that they eat, have a good time, and spend their time with a smile.

For this, we need good ingredients, good chefs, and a good environment for employees to work in. It is not easy to source great ingredients, and sometimes your chef is upset. Sometimes a customer thinks the food is spicy, and when the food comes back to the kitchen the chef should make sure he says,“I'm sorry, let me make another one for them.”That’s what it is.

It's all about giving and taking. When my dad said “Do as much good as you can and if you cannot do good then don’t do bad,” it is only this. When the food is sent back to the kitchen, my chef can be upset saying, “Come on this is not even spicy for me. Why are they doing it?” but any wrong that happens has to be fixed right away. It’s like a game where everybody wants to win, but no one wins when you don’t empathize.

When you give food, 
give it from your heart.

Q: Talking about ingredients, running a restaurant for the masses is a challenging task. How do you maintain your food supply chain?

NP: The sourcing of ingredients is directly from India. Also, I’ve found an importer in Atlanta that guarantees the ingredients will be here within a month. When the ingredients are fresh, it shows in the food, whether you are at home or in a restaurant. If the ingredients are fresh, the food is eaten.

Then comes the chef's cooking with love. Our job is to make sure that everybody who is working is happy and is enjoying what they do. When you love what you do then you will end up doing what you love. When this happens, an employer or manager will be excited saying,“My guests are enjoying the food! My chefs are cooking better food! What is the point of me having a long face?” 

What I’m trying to say is: when you give food, give it from your heart.

Every guest or patron is not a dollar sign. They are your family. Food is one way you can connect to somebody, make them laugh, feel happy and light.Then, when they walk out of your restaurant, they will talk about the entire experience, not just the food, or the waiter, or the robot that serves food in my restaurant. The pandemic helped us think out of the box, so I added the robot! 

Q:  That’s amazing. Before we wrap, what is the one thing that you would like to share with our readers as a takeaway?

NP: Making sure food is available to everybody. There is no point saying, “This is good food, so I have to charge that extra dollar.” It’s all about quality and quantity, not just quantity and price. We need to make food available and accessible, and not charge extra for good food.

Illustrations by LAKSHMI GADDAM