Free classifieds has converted me from miserable to satisfied.
My father died 2 years back and left me with an old restaurant that my great grandfather started with my grandfather 60 years ago. The restaurant has stood the test of time and still has a very small but loyal customer base who had been eating there for generations, but it has remained pretty much the same since it was started, it gets an occasional paint and repair job once every decade and that's about it. I was a software engineer working with a corporate company, earning around 30 Grand a month, but I wasn't happy with the job, the job was pretty close to modern slavery, and the kind of work I did there wasn't satisfying for the soul.
I wanted to take over my father's business, but I knew nothing about restaurants and to make matters worse the restaurant wasn't making enough dough for me to take care of my family's finances, as newer more efficient competitors had cropped up everywhere. I wanted to develop my business, all the banks I approached for a loan were sceptical to say the least as the property that I wanted to attest for the loan, was slowly crumbling into pieces.
One fine day I was sitting at my restaurant and going through all the feasible options available, when I noticed a strange trend, more and more people were starting to get parcels there, instead of walking into a restaurant to eat which made me realize that food is my commodity not the restaurant, so I decided to market my food specially and use the whole restaurant space to start a full-fledged delivery based cloud kitchen. We ran a Kerala cuisine restaurant in Chennai, which was highly in demand, I next wanted to market my product and service in a low but highly effective cost that made me turn toward free classifieds on the internet – Used by millions of people all over India. There are so many portals where one could place free classified ads such as Quikr, Olx, Izydaisy.com to name a few in the World.
Within a few months of me placing those free classifieds websites and using the social media to create awareness about my business, orders came rushing into my roof. I previously was just making 20 Grand running the restaurant business but then just in a few months it turned into 70 Grand, later a profitable amount of 100 Grand a month, I had to quit my job, which I wanted to do for a very long time, hire more chefs and delivery men. Our business got so much traction that people even started asking for our franchise. It was my humble opinion that we were not ready for a franchise yet, but we did manage to start another branch on the other end of the city which is also working great with the help of classifieds, and now I have incorporated YouTube marketing to the mix. We now have our own dedicated food channel that drives more consumers to try our products. I have also started learning to cook, I help out in the kitchen occasionally, for the first time there is nothing much to complain about in my life, free classifieds has converted me from miserable to satisfied.
