PEOPLE Visionary
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A FRESH START
SIDDHARTH “SID” SEHGAL, restaurateur and Managing Director of Fresh Food Company and Get Fresh Holdings, speaks to neetinder dhillon about inspirations and life-changing moments
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hen Thomas Keller knocked Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan out of the picture, it was more than just an epiphany (even if the three Michelin star chef was unaware of the effect he had just had). And this fateful meal – from nearly two decades ago at The Mandarin Oriental Bangkok’s Le Normandie restaurant – changed the course of Siddharth “Sid” Sehgal’s life forever. The toss-up then was between a career as an investment banker in New York or taking over a failing restaurant the family had just acquired in Bangkok. “That lunch changed me,” he says. ‘Oysters & Pearls’, Chef Keller’s signature dish, was the highlight of the lunch seared into Sid’s memory, but it was the sides that completely threw him; the simplicity of the ingredients belied by the complexity of flavours. “I just had to ask him what he did to the carrots and potatoes. I had never had anything better.” The chef’s laughing response was “Everything tastes better with clarified butter”, which gave Sid a motto for life as a restaurateur – quality, simplicity, and generosity of flavours are a lethal combination. In turn, the aforementioned failing restaurant was rebranded and reimagined, morphing into Indus, which has been listed in the Thailand Michelin Guide for five consecutive years. From being at first a purely Indian (and occasional expat) hangout, the Indus of 2022 is now on the list of every foodie in Thailand. “Thomas Keller made French food so accessible and I wanted to do the same with Indian food. To change the perception Thai people had about Indian food,” Sid points out. “I never thought I would get into the restaurant business. There wasn’t a lot of early inspiration, except that my grandfather had a tiny restaurant on Sukhumvit Soi 11 called The Moghul Room.” While also helping out with the family publishing business, he worked around the clock rebuilding this restaurant, “I was valet, cook, waiter, and cashier. I did everything. I brought in a chef from India, connected with family friend Camelia Punjabi (hospitality legend of London’s Chutney Mary fame) for advice. I read books, went to India, travelled, and figured it all out through trial and error.” But, truth be told, there are two lunches in time that define who Sid, at 40, is today; that storied five-course lunch by the chef/patron of The French Laundry, and a sandwich wrap at a deli in New York when Sid was a student. The second “epiphany”, however, sat on the back burner a bit longer. “The food at the deli was delicious, convenient, and fast. And it helped me lose weight – the sins of too much junk food,” he recalls. “The fitness craze in Thailand started in the early Noughties, and replicating that deli made sense. But I knew that if I started a health food-based business without a critical mass interested in health and wellness, it wouldn’t work.” By 2013 the timing seemed right, and that’s when Get Fresh – now a chain of 12 restaurants offering guilt-free healthy options – began its journey as Dressed (a franchise of an Atlanta brand), with Sid and co-founder Anchit Sachdev having set up the Bangkok-based Fresh Food Company. The two had previously, very successfully, collaborated on the Bun Factory in Bangalore, India, a chain of 10 stores selling coffee-flavoured
buns. “Those two years between Bangalore and Bangkok, was like an MBA – negotiating the deal, setting up the company, the cold chain, opening shops, hiring staff. I learned a lot. After selling it, we started Dressed in Thailand.” Once the initial euphoria of opening Dressed subsided, reality struck. “We were following the franchise system meticulously, but the system was flawed,” Sid explains. “Food cost was high, the layout was not attractive, the menu had no photos and portions were wrong – American size. So, we went back with changes that they accepted. We then reinvested, and changed everything. Food costs came down from 60 percent to 30 percent, and sales went up 300 percent. We suggested they adopt our system in their other Asian franchises, but either they didn’t want to or weren’t able to. Eventually, all Dressed outlets folded, except ours. The company liquidated but told us, ‘You’re on your own, do what you like.’ And so we did.” The journey from Dressed to Get Fresh (rebranded in 2020) took seven years, and included a venture capitalist, Stonelotus Ventures, looking to invest in health and wellness related businesses. The original Get Fresh duo is now in the process of handing over the reins to a newly appointed CEO tasked with expanding Get Fresh to at least 30 locations across Southeast Asia, with the co-founders transitioning to the Board of Directors (Get Fresh Holdings Singapore). There’s an exit strategy in place and a new venture on the cards, but that will be revealed in time. Indus, meanwhile, is central to Sid’s identity, connecting him to his roots as a third-generation Thai-Indian (on his mother’s side). “I grew up here and studied here. You belong to both cultures, but you’re Indian and kind of in somebody else’s country. You speak the language, but not perfectly. You want to assimilate and still be Indian, be accepted a bit more. So, Indus is my way of showing Thais the best of India and also celebrating my roots.” Responsibility changes people, but Sid wears it well. His smile still comes easily, and keeping fit and eating healthy are his secret weapons – making time for tennis and running a priority. Sid loves playing polo too, and he and his wife Narisa (Kubota) are passionate about horses. Narisa is also pursuing a doctoral thesis on “human resource management and resilience within organisations”. As for their favourite stomping grounds, Sid lists Siri House, Aesop’s, Sühring, and Pongchuros. Discovering new restaurants is also a passion, and when travel begins again in earnest, the couple have Japan on their mind. What do people not know about you, I ask? “That I love to be in a quiet place in nature and meditate and help as many people as I can achieve their goals.” On a philosophical note, he adds, “We are all just passengers on a train, trying to experience as much as we can during the journey.” A core concept he swears by – from the book Delivering Happiness, by Tony Hsieh, the iconoclastic CEO of Zappos – suggests ‘using happiness as a framework to produce profits, passion and purpose both in business and in life’. It’s a lesson that fits in well with who Sid is – a man who makes time for the good things in life, but considers his business an emotional investment.
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