Deaf, Mute And Magical — This Mumbai Restaurant Teaches The Real Power Of Sign Language

Mirchi and Mime, a unique restaurant in the Indian financial capital Mumbai, employs deaf and mute staff for a very different fine dining experience.

‘These young boys and girls are naturals. They are always smiling and they are more intuitive and more focused. They possess the right talent for the hospitality industry,’ says Prashant Issar, co-founder of the Mumbai-based restaurant Mirchi and Mime. He is talking about his staff at the restaurant — 24 of them, all deaf and mute.

Issar, an MBA from Henley Business School in Britain, has over 20 years of experience in the restaurant business in Britain and India and has run restaurants alongside those of Michelin star restaurant chefs like Gordon Ramsay, hence learning a lot from their methods of cooking and promotion.

The idea of a high-end restaurant that employed hearing and speech impaired staff first struck in August 2014– when Anuj Shah, also an MBA from Henley, met with Issar. The core value they agreed was to generate wealth for both the society and the individual. Their restaurant opened in May 2015; each of the dishes had a back story, for instance some recipes had been taken straight from the durbars of Mughal emperors like Jehangir.

Yet the spine is its differently-abled deaf and mute staff — servers, cashiers or bartender. The staff has demonstrated their capability and you can sense that in the pride with which the founders talk of their staff. Each day the restaurant serves 220–250 people, and you are unlikely to find a table unless you make a reservation.

But it wasn’t all easy. The staff were recruited from some of the best schools for the differently-abled in Mumbai such as Rochiram T Thadani, NASTOH and Ali Yavar Jung, and then Mirchi and Mime partnered with Dr. Reddy’s Foundation to develop an eight-week curriculum in life sciences, job readiness and basic understanding of the English language. The staff also took a two week of training course in hospitality skills such as how to hold a tray, pour water and so on.

An experienced barista who trained the staff said that it was his hardest workshop — not because of the communication gap but because of the valid questions the hearing impaired staff asked. ‘They simply block out the un-required noise we take in.’

Issar has big dreams ahead. ‘We are soon opening a second branch in South Mumbai. In the next five years we will open 21 such restaurants and employ 600 staff members. I am hoping to groom many of these to be supervisors and managers in the restaurants.’

And why not? They employees after all make an organisation — and the deaf and mute workforce here have helped build a sustainable profitable business. It just makes economic sense. The restaurant broke even operationally in two months, what typically takes at least four months. And their loyalty is unparalleled — where the restaurant’s attrition is 5% compared to an industry average at 60%-70%.