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R. Ravikumar

Chennai, Oct. 20 After entering the restaurant business with its first outlet – CK’s Foodstaurant in Puducherry – early this year, the Chennai-based CavinKare Pvt Ltd is all set to expand its footprint in that space with an eatery in Chennai.

While CK’s Foodstaurant is a multi-cuisine outlet serving non-vegetarian food, the proposed one will be a pure vegetarian restaurant.

CavinKare has taken over an up-and-running restaurant – Palimar — on Chennai’s arterial road, Anna Salai, for the purpose.

According to sources close to the development, CavinKare is in the process of doing up the place and tweaking the menu to suit different palates. “The restaurant will be launched under a new name before the end of this month,” says these sources.

Started as a shampoo company, CavinKare is now a major player in the personal care products and foods spaces. Of the Rs 700-crore turnover, 70 per cent comes from its personal care products division, while the rest from the foods business.

“We want to reverse this ratio. Our idea is to take the foods business contribution to 75-80 per cent of our total turnover in the next five years, as it is a higher margin segment and scalable,” Mr C.K. Ranganathan, Chairman and Managing Director of CavinKare, said after launching the company’s first restaurant in Puducherry.

It has drawn up a Rs 500-crore investment plan over a three-year horizon to hike its foods portfolio. After acquiring a fruit juice brand Maa for Rs 30 crore last year, a couple of months ago, it acquired a majority stake in the Mumbai-based Garden Hygienic Snacks that owns Garden branded namkeens and wafers, for Rs 50 crore.

It also plans to add capacity to its milk processing units at Bhawani and Kanchipuram. It is looking at a procurement of two lakh litres a day by the end of the year from the current 47,000 litres.

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