The stories of Bert and other expat restaurateurs

Bert Mueller moved from Silver Spring, USA, to Bengaluru 12 years ago, after graduating in music and public policy. Before he jumped into the F&B industry, he had composed music for a few documentaries. One of them was about fracking, or the process of injecting liquid at high pressure into rocks to extract oil. If he hadn’t become the founder of one of India’s popular fast food chains, he would probably have been making music. “I had some contacts in the field,” he says.

Mueller is the founder of a restaurant chain with 100-plus outlets across India. The business was born in Bengaluru. On a weekday morning, I am at his corporate office in Indiranagar, not too far from the madding crowds of Bengaluru. I am curious to learn what it is like for an expat to run a food business in India. 

Early days in India

Some of the produce used in the dishes are grown from seeds Bert Mueller imported to cater to the Mexican recipes. 

As a student of William & Mary University in Virginia, USA, when Mueller first visited India for a voluntary semester abroad, he found in Indians a warmth and openness that he didn’t usually see in other countries. He picked India because he was somewhat familiar with the culture; he had worked on a project on Hinduism. He had seen pictures, and had heard good things about the country from people who had visited earlier. The plus point: people also spoke English. 

When he got here, he realised that there was so much to explore. While he was composing music, it was clear to him that something wasn’t clicking. He was thinking of switching careers, and his visit to India simply sealed the deal. Working in food was a decision that came to him easily. He moved to India a year later, with two childhood friends, with whom he co-founded California Burrito.

“Opening the first store was incredibly frustrating,” he says. Neither Mueller nor his friends had started a business before, much less in a foreign country. It was one new thing after the other, but he muses, “No one plays a violin perfectly the first time.” One of the challenges they faced was when he and his co-founders first hired the ‘crooked man’ Mueller has spoken about earlier. 

The man in question tried to replicate their business model and open a burrito restaurant of his own. They were rescued by several well-meaning strangers who warned them of something fishy. The crooked man did eventually open his copied burrito restaurant, but it closed after a year and a half. 

“I have never met another person like that since,” says Mueller. This is also perhaps because of his unique hiring process. He likes to interview 50-100 people for one position, because each hire “must fit into our culture.” 

Some of the produce used in the dishes are grown from seeds Bert Mueller imported to cater to the Mexican recipes. 

AI is coming to his rescue, especially when he needs to figure out if he is being scammed. Pop in a legal question and out comes your answer, and that, he says, has helped him navigate the bureaucracy. “There is so much I would have done differently if I knew more,” he says.

Real estate challenges were also aplenty. Before they settled on the first outlet in Domlur, they had almost finalised one in west Bengaluru and rented a flat there. When the plan changed and work moved to Domlur, they found themselves trudging from west Bengaluru to Domlur in a rented car, braving the city’s roads before they could finally move.

Not having a formal education in business was not a handicap; his real education, he maintains, began when he moved to India. Every alternate year, he visits his retired parents in Mexico. They were professors of medicine in the US. His brother, now based in Germany, works for the US military as an orthopaedic surgeon. Once, Mueller even took a higher ranking employee with him to Mexico and London to get him to taste the dishes in restaurants there.

He points out that people’s palates have evolved a great deal in Bengaluru. Restaurants in the city are possibly better than those in second-tier US cities, with respect to their decor and the kind of food they serve.

Farming life

Mexican food relies primarily on fresh ingredients, and the taste of each changes the shape of any dish. “The onions,” he says, laughing. “I don’t even remember what they taste like outside India.” The biggest challenge when he first began working was to get the dishes to taste right. At the time, his team used ingredients like Kashmiri rajma instead of pinto beans and found that everything tasted completely different. 

Tailoring the menu to an Indian palate wasn’t too much of a concern because not everything was ‘exactly’ Mexican, although he does concede that the menu here is far more flavourful than Mexican restaurants in the US. The effort to remain ‘authentic’ resulted in him taking up agriculture. While Americans are legally not permitted to own agricultural land, he has employed contract farmers who produce crops with seeds they have imported. He has been able to successfully transport the hass avocado to India, and even the uniquely Mexican tomatinas that contain significantly less water than Indian tomatoes. 

Corn, he discovered, grows well on the foothills of cooler regions, like Udhagamandalam (Ooty) and the Himalayas, while chillies grow superbly in Gujarat. That said, growing all vegetables required for a restaurant chain is simply not sustainable, he says. That is why he makes do with combinations of homegrown veggies and supplies from vendors. But one thing remains constant: everything is carefully thought through.

Mueller hangs out at a popular Vietnamese eatery, but he mostly likes to stay home in Bengaluru. Indian food is in his top-3 favourite foods, with Hyderabadi biryani and jowar roti meals being his go-tos. He occasionally meets his friends at house parties. He works most of the time, goes to the gym, and lives a simple life. He concedes that it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it works for him. With an apartment barely two minutes away from his office, he walks to work.

Bert Mueller

What’s in a bowl?

We are at his outlet in Indiranagar (the one with all the test recipes), when he whips out his phone to book an auto to another outlet. He is sure he doesn’t want to drive in the city (he gets a lot of work done on the road) and finds autos convenient. In the city, language has never been an issue for Mueller, but he’s learnt enough Kannada to speak to auto drivers. He finds that everyone knows enough English. Even when he first moved here, he didn’t have too much trouble.

At the outlet, where we arrive after a short auto ride, the staff pause for a moment when they see him and wish him good morning before getting on with their day. He knows most of their names, if not all. They are in the middle of the weekly review meeting. He doesn’t interrupt. A little while later, he asks about some new equipment they have bought recently. The staff at the counter are happy with it. “Indians are not as confrontational as people in the West,” he tells me. “When we first started, my accent was very different and people didn’t understand, but I had no idea!” For the longest time, his employees simply responded with a quick ‘yes sir’ because they didn’t want to ask twice, but now they have a good rapport. There’s no hesitation.

When we get back into the auto, he reminds me of the black bowls I saw at the counter. A competitor got in touch with him a while ago to compliment his company’s choice of cutlery, so Mueller offered them his vendor’s number.

Italian dessert to French classics
Bengaluru is home to a host of other expat restauranteurs who settled here for ‘the weather’, ‘the quality of life’ and ‘the opportunities’. The cuisines are as diverse as the countries they hail from — Thai, Japanese, Korean, Italian and French. DH on Saturday spoke to three expats who run some of the city’s most popular restaurants.

Sara Calderoni and Giancarlo Segalini
Italian husband-and-wife team Sara Calderoni and Giancarlo Segalini opened Milano Ice Cream in Kochi in 2012. Since then, this Italian gelato parlour and cafe has expanded to Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Trivandrum. The ice creams are made from Segalini’s family recipe which is 70-80 years old. They moved to Bengaluru 10 years ago. The journey has not always been smooth sailing. The access to quality raw materials is limited, Sara says. They have had to find ways and means to adapt their recipes depending on the availability of local and imported ingredients.

Candice Lock
For chef Candice Lock, who runs Mexican restaurant Chinita, a 6-month transfer to Bengaluru from New York turned into a 17-year-long stay. Born and raised in Malaysia, she moved to the US when she was 18. A
few months into her transfer to Bengaluru, Candice met her future husband, Amit, and they decided to get married. She eventually decided to explore her love for cooking. Today, Chinita has four outlets.Candice has learned to overcome language barriers. She communicates with her staff in what she calls ‘kitchen Hindi’. She notes that it is difficult to handle the licensing process, especially if you are not from here. Thankfully, he brother-in-law Sameer took over that side of the business.

Amiel Guerin
Amiel Guerin, a Frenchman, came to India in 2010. He began his culinary journey in Bengaluru as a chef at a casual cafe before launching Amiel Gourmet, his own modern French food business. Today, it also has outlets
in Sahakar Nagar and at a sports centre in Yelahanka. Guerin says the opportunities he found in India’s F&B sector far exceed what he might have accessed in his home country — or even in the US and Spain, where he previously worked as a chef. “It’s easier here to stand out and build a unique food identity,” he says, explaining that while the culinary landscape in Europe is saturated, India still offers untapped potential.

With inputs from Aditi Pavana Ramesh.