Mohammed Rashid, the proprietor behind Little 5 Points’s long-standing Planet Bombay Indian restaurant, is getting into the fast-casual restaurant space.
Rashid — who relocated Planet Bombay to Edgewood Avenue before the pandemic after operating on Moreland Avenue for 26 years — is in permitting with the City of Atlanta to open India Eats, the restauranteur confirmed with What Now Atlanta Friday.
Aiming for a debut in as little as two months, the timeline really depends on how quickly the restaurant moves through permitting, Rashid said.
Specializing in Northern Indian delicacies, India Eats will be a departure from Planet Bombay mainly as it is designed for to-go and takeout with limited dining on site — think 10 to 15 seats.
Rashid said he is shifting to a fast-casual format with this new concept because “it’s too hard to find the staff” needed to run a sit-down restaurant in this market. “With India Eats we don’t need servers and we don’t need additional chefs,” Rashid said. “We have a chef who is creating the recipes. All you need are a few cooks.”
Rashid said India Eats, at 14 Park Place South SE, in the former Weekday Cafe space, will be “very easy to operate” once his team completes about $65,000 in renovations. “Ethnic restaurants have been hit particularly hard with the labor shortage,” Rashid said. “You have to have good quality chefs from the country of the cuisine, and there aren’t any right now.”
Let me fix something written here. He’s not willing to pay his staff a livable wage and therefore can’t find people silly enough to work for him.