From charcuterie to cheese room and white strawberries from Japan to sea asparagus from the Netherlands: Nature’s Basket from the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group is entering the luxury food retail industry with large-scale, artisanal experience stores modeled on the Harrods Food Hall in London.
The first such store from the Goenka stable, spread over 12,500 sq ft, will open at the Phoenix Palladium mall in Mumbai on Saturday.
Shashwat Goenka, chairman of Spencer’s Retail, said Nature’s Basket was mainly in the gourmet retail and premium sector. “We are now moving into high-end supermarkets, which will require a lot of experience,” he said.
Nature’s Basket is a subsidiary of Spencer’s Retail.
“It is modeled on the Harrods Food Hall concept. This will redefine what gastronomic luxury is – not just for high-end consumers, but for every aspirational consumer,” he said.
The concept stores under the Nature’s Basket Artisan Pantry brand would range from 7,000 to 12,500 square feet – much larger than the Nature’s Basket stores of 2,000 to 2,500 square feet. Nature’s Basket would be on the premium side and Nature’s Basket Artisan Pantry on the luxury side, Goenka explained.
That would mean a range of offerings from the Artisan Pantry – truffle to nut bar, spice souk, chocolate factory, cheese room, live honey bar, caviar bar, exotic fresh meats, et al.
“We are also launching a unique concept called Salt Bar, which will contain more than twenty types of salt. We are going to sell large salt pans on which you can actually cook food,” says Goenka.
The farmers’ market, he promises, will be a “little bit different”, with exotic fruits and vegetables from all parts of the world, including the most remote locations in India.
Many things that will be available in these concept stores will be available in India for the first time – whether it is a Buddha hand lemon, or white strawberries or fresh yuzu fruit from Japan or prickly pear from Europe, Goenka said. “Sea asparagus is not available anywhere in Asia and we are actually going to import them from the Netherlands.”
After Palladium mall, two other Artisan Pantry concept stores will be launched this financial year: Alipore, Kolkata and Bandra Linking Road, Mumbai. That would bring the total number of stores under the Nature’s Basket portfolio to 35. There will likely be three to five Nature’s Basket Artisan Pantry stores next fiscal year.
“We will take the concept beyond Mumbai and Calcutta to Delhi and Bengaluru,” Goenka said.
Goenka believes there is a market for luxury groceries. “There is a huge demand and a market. Much of the research for the concept store came from our existing Nature’s Basket consumers. People are looking for experiences and are willing to pay a premium for them.”
How much can each city absorb? “Different cities have different options,” Goenka emphasizes.
The Artisan Pantry concept stores, which are much larger and deliver higher margins with premium SKUs, would help accelerate Nature’s Basket’s path to profitability. Goenka said the stores were targeting break-even from the second month of operation.
Spencer’s Retail had acquired the loss-making Nature’s Basket in July 2019. “Within a year after we took over, things turned around. And then Covid happened, so we went through the whole recovery process,” Goenka said.
On a consolidated basis, Spencer’s Retail posted a net loss of Rs 70 crore in the quarter ended September 30, 2023. The net loss in the year-ago period was Rs 54 crore, and in the previous quarter it was Rs 64 crore. Operating revenues in the September quarter stood at Rs 574 crore, down 11.6 percent year-on-year.