Vanshika Wadhwa is the director and creative head of the brand – The House of FIO. A design enthusiast at heart, Vanshika has jumped into the family business to take the legacy forward. She currently oversees a portfolio that spans Kaméi in Saket, The Fio Table in Gurgaon, and Fio Cookhouse and Dandy in Nehru Place.
In this exclusive interview with The Restaurant Times, Vanshika Wadhwa takes us through her journey as a restaurant entrepreneur, business challenges, and her take on bringing design thinking into different aspects of the business.
The Convergence of Design & Hospitality
It started back in 2015, and it was, as Vanshika says, “purely accidental.” On a personal level, she was not feeling very satisfied just working an interior design job.
She is, by her own admission, very grateful to have been a part of Fio since its inception. Since the business came through her family, she has always kind of shadowed the process. It was in that interim period, when she was thinking of her next move, that she started working on the creative and design side of the business. One event came in after another, and then the next thing she knew, it had been a year, and she was really happy because she enjoyed it.
Working with family, though, “came with a lot of learning. I learned what it’s like to work in India and how Indian family businesses are set up.”
For starters, she spent a good two years just doing marketing and events and having fun with what she knew and understood. During this time, she also met a lot of interesting people. That’s when she realized she wanted to create a brand of her own, something she could resonate with more, something that was relevant to her age group. She was 25 at the time she started working on Fio Pop, a concept she would go on to help build and refine over the following years.
It took her a lot of time to even come up with the name. COVID was a major setback. But once things got better, they tied all the loose ends together, invested a lot of time to give the brand a strong shape, and finally launched it in 2021.
In her opinion, it doesn’t matter if you’re a designer or a lawyer; entrepreneurship is a different ball game altogether. “It is more about how you approach life or your work. With the right approach and attitude, you can do anything. In my case, design thinking has inspired my work quite a lot,” she says.
And then, of course, there is what came after. By 2024, the journey had taken another sharp turn. “From ’21 to ’24, it was a lot of refining. We identified what we weren’t good at and let those things go. It was like swimming against the current until we found our natural flow,” she shared.
On Delivery, Outdoors, and Doing What You Know
Delivery was never their forte. The F&B industry is huge (yes, there’s a variety of businesses), but Fio, Vanshika explains, is not the kind meant for delivery. “You don’t create palaces or physical experiences for something that has to come to you in a box. It doesn’t work like that.”
Of course, it was very challenging from 2020 to 2022 as the number of delivery brands surged. Online delivery is a sales hack, and in the first year of COVID, they also tried to focus on it because back then, restaurants were not left with, in fact, any other choice. But it has never been their primary focus. They are, however, working on some newer concepts that are delivery-focused and would cater to a larger audience.
The House of FIO has always been big on ambiance. The courtyard and outdoor dining, Vanshika notes, are growing in popularity as people prefer the outdoors more than the indoors.
“12 years ago, when my father started Fio Cookhouse, it was a novel idea to create an outdoor space like this for eating out,” she says. These days, one can go for a terrace garden, a vertical garden, or even a courtyard.
The lesson, for her, has always been the same – evaluate your strengths and let them define the path for you.
The Five Senses of Hospitality
The question of food presentation and social media, Vanshika says, is more relevant to Fio Pop as it caters to the younger audience, i.e., the Millennials and Gen-Z. Youngsters live online, and it’s important to use social media as a brand because it’s the best tool to create awareness.
That said, they serve a lot of dishes that are not picture-perfect but are very delicious. “I think you eat with your eyes first. So, it is important that something looks nice and we are particular about it. But we don’t drive ourselves crazy merely on the presentation. If it’s put together well, that’s fine for us,” she says.
When working on Fio Pop, she knew this one thing with utmost surety: “Going out is often about meeting people, not just the food or cocktails. Every detail matters, be it the music, the lighting, or the way a place smells. You have to think about the five senses.”
She credits her sister, Vritama, who runs Project 810. “She defines how a space should feel, and we refine every detail together. That’s been ingrained in us by our parents.”
Consistency, Teams, and the Framework
There is no foolproof way to ensure consistency in food presentation, especially in the concept that The House of FIO works with. What you need is a good team of people who understand what resonates with your thoughts about the brand.
At Fio, there’s a structure in place where recipes and food presentation processes are locked in. However, they allow leeway to a certain degree to be able to create authentic and fresher experiences, but these had to work within the framework and the ideology of the brand.
Menu Engineering for Keeping It Right-Sized
Vanshika always wanted to have a European-style cafe, but the food ideology at Fio was to keep their heart in Europe while being inspired by the rest of the world. It gave the team flexibility in terms of menu engineering. Besides, it was much easier for the customer to understand. “Your customer should easily be able to understand your format, your kitchen, and your service,” Vanshika says.
Another important thing is to have the right-sized menu. It’s really great if you can serve 120 dishes, but the question is – can you really deliver this type of menu? They decided to keep only 40 to 50 dishes.
“I feel it’s the sweet spot,” she says. “But if you have a large-scale restaurant and an all-day dine-in format, you can think differently.”
The Vision And What Legacy Really Means
The restaurant industry is not as glamorous as it seems. It requires a lot of work. “So you got to love what you do,” Vanshika says. The word “restaurateur” still feels new to her. She instead likes being called a designer first. That said, there is ample scope if you have the right attitude, patience, and love for what you do.
After Fio Pop, a brand she helped build from the ground up before it ran its course, the House is now working on a few new brands in the delivery segment as well as in the premium segment.
And in the bigger picture, what Vanshika is building is something she has thought hard about. “Pop was designed to be scalable, but we realized that wasn’t us. We wanted to focus on experiential dining. So, we went back to the drawing board and identified our core values. That clarity shaped everything that followed,” she said.
The goal, in the end, is not always the food or the cocktail. “The most rewarding thing is seeing people enjoy a space you built.”
“Sometimes you’re swimming against the current, and then the current sort of corrects you? That is what the last few years felt like. My identity is shifting, and to be honest, I’m having fun.”
