Meeting Suleman Raza, the trendsetter in Car Dine-In in the UK.

COVID-19 is disrupting lives, habits and patterns and restaurants were undoubtedly one of the hardest hit sectors. The entire restaurant industry is now surviving on takeaways & deliveries and operating very differently than they did some 12 months ago. We saw a complete lockdown which resulted in a ban on dine-in and as a result, sales dropped, urging us all to think out of the box to deal with the prevailing uncertainty. I first handedly experienced many peers running out of business. As a person who always has his eyes on innovations and disruptions, I was on a lookout for what might disrupt the restaurant industry.

This ‘disruption’ might not be the most innovative invention but it undoubtedly is the need of the hour. As the trend shifted from indoor/outdoor dine in to car dine in, many people became uncomfortable with this trend and that is why this innovation is simple yet revolutionary. An idea that disrupts the car dining experience and translates to comfort while at the same time, gives the owner a competitive advantage.

When I reached out to this innovator asking about his innovation and how he achieved this, he said ‘To start with, the box I was thinking in was less on space. Weeks after weeks were spent in trying to come up with something revolutionary that completely changes car dining however, I often hit a roadblock. An artist paints best when he does not worry about the size of his pallet or the canvas but here, the canvas was limited to the room in the car. I had learnt that water cuts through rocks not because of its strength but because of its persistence and with this thought in my mind, I kept striking at the boundaries of creativity till I broke them. Beyond those boundaries, this is what I discovered.’

This simple looking ‘tray’ is not what it seems at first sight. This is a bespoke tray especially made for car dining and designed to give customers a feel of restaurant dining inside their cars. Not only does it add the restaurant dining touch, it also eases car dining for customers. How? Well no more placing plates on the dashboard and worrying about spoiling your car’s interior if you accidentally spill food. How the whole process works is that when you come in, we take your order and then bring your food to your car in this tray. The tray when placed inside the car rests in the window of each side of the car.

Judging by the response, I can conclude that this innovator’s constant striking at the boundaries of creativity paid off. He successfully disrupted the car dining experience and created something that enabled him to unlock a whole new experience not only for his customers but managed to set a new trend for the entire Restaurant industry in the UK.

At the end, I would just like to reinstate the fact that things never remain the same and that is why we should keep innovating like this man did. While before the lockdown, things were completely different, the lockdown brought all of us to a point where we ran out of reserves. The story of this man was similar, however he kept striking until he successfully derived a solution.

Nothing remains the same however to turn something in your favour, you have to keep striking and one day, when the iron is hot and you hit, you’ll surely hit the jackpot.