Diwali arrived with the knowledge of my upcoming trip to Las Vegas. At every party I would be poked enviously, “Oh khara gambling karun yenaar!” It was however a working break that beckoned in ‘Fabulous Las Vegas’, which happens to be the iconic sign right at the beginning of ‘The Strip’. It was The Wynn – owned by the legendary Steve Wynn who was one of the principal architects responsible for converting Las Vegas from the Gambling City to the Strip — that was the setting of the Restaurant Finance Conference 2018. Over 3500 people attended; probably 10 times more than the number of professional chain restaurateurs in the whole of India.
The USA restaurant industry is far more mature than its Indian counterpart. Nearly a thousand attendees were lenders and financiers looking to fund not just new restaurants and concepts but people for buyouts, acquisitions of existing multi-units and master franchise rights. I was amazed as the average Indian restaurateur will be fortunate to find someone to supply even furniture for a new restaurant on credit!
Add to that, the explosion of new ideas. I had the pleasure of hearing Ron Sheik – erstwhile founder, promoter and CEO of Panera. He recently sold his hugely popular chain for.. Drum roll please…8 billion USD! He shared many of his experiences as a keynote speaker about how to steer organisations and make long term strategic changes which benefit the organisation as a whole.
By the end of our 3-day conference of restaurateurs, Las Vegas was flooded with 30,000 people who came to attend the Marijuana conference (Four states in the US including Las Vegas have legalised cannabis for recreational use). Needless to say, some of them were flying higher than the birds in the sky. Interestingly, we had a speaker at our conference giving us amazing insight with statistics about the impact marijuana has had on restaurant, including fall in liquor sales and increase in food sales of outlets as people don’t consume booze and marijuana together but get hungrier and so eat more food! New restaurants are also coming out with Marijuana-incorporated foods, much like toddy in appam or beer in fried batter.
Among the standout talks was the one on the craft beer revolution in the USA, and the presentation by Art Laffler, an economist with a difference. Incidentally, unlike nearly everybody who I had met until then, who thought Trump was a jackass, Laffler considered him no less than John Rambo. He made some pretty convincing points about Trump’s economic policy and implementation to support that. Post-conference, the fun continued with my school friends settled in the USA, our language, jokes and activities to be neither shared nor understood by those outside the circle. Viva Las Vegas!