With a customised ambiance and great food options catering to wide range of taste buds, this restaurant offers one-of-its-kind services to corporate customers. Café Anaaz, a high-end food service management solution by The Village, recently opened a corporate branch at Al Wakra Hospital, Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC).
Combining some of the best elements from other outlets of Integral Food Services (IFS), Anaaz Café comes with the flexibility to customise its menu and interior design according to the target audience. First of its kind, Café Anaaz at Al Wakra Hospital offers something for everyone.
From Indian to Filipino and Western cuisine options, besides an around-the-clock decked coffee bar, this dining place offers a perfect retreat to both patients and visitors at one of the busiest hospitals in town. Within just a couple of weeks of its opening, the café is also already doing more than 400 transactions a day.
It is a combination of clean and cosy environment, variety in menu, quality food and affordable prices that makes the café click for people from both inside and outside of the hospital.
Café Anaaz comes from the same corporate dining concept of IFS where they provide food services to corporate organisations like Losail Project Development company, HSBC corporate office, Ooredoo headquarters, Qatar Rail headquarters, and Stenden University, among others.
“In Indian cuisine, we have [tapped into] Royal Tandoor and Tandoor Express, and the highest selling products at these restaurants are Butter Chicken and Chicken Biryani. The number of these two dishes that we sell, I think no one can beat us in that,” Arul Kumar Krishnan, the Deputy General Manager Retails Operations and Development, IFS, tells Community.
Café Anaaz is managed by a Corporate Culinary Director, who heads the business of The Village and other multiple branches. He decides the food menu. The portions are not huge, but just right.
The interior has been designed keeping in mind the environment of the hospital. The design is a little different from other cafés. The pattern, the colour and the mood is different.
“One thing that I am confident in is that you cannot find such a café in any other hospital. You walk into any hospital and look for a café, and this is the best café you will find,” says Krishnan.
Even though the café is currently doing about 400 transactions a day, Krishnan says they have the capacity to handle much more. Live cooking starts at 7am and closes at 11pm, while the coffee bar is open 24 hours (non-Ramadan timings).
“We are doing better than we had expected. There definitely was a huge demand here for such a café. Though they have other cafeterias, this [offers better ambience and food] while still being very affordable,” says the deputy general manager.
“If you see our menu, dishes do not cost 40, 45 or 65 Qatari riyals. A portion of pasta anywhere in the market costs 35-40 riyals. Here you get pasta for between 14 and 20 riyals,” he adds. And the pasta is prepared exactly the way it is done in any other gourmet restaurant.
Unlike other branches, Café Anaaz at Al Wakra Hospital is open to outsiders as well. On weekdays, the flow is very high compared to the weekends because there are a lot of visitors, says Krishnan.
One of the biggest attractions for the people from outside is the price factor. “You go anywhere in the market and buy a shawarama, it would not be less than 8 to 10 riyals. We offer shawarma for only 6 riyals,” says Krishnan.
The coffee bar offers premium salads, sandwiches, and pastries. The bar also stocks juices that are freshly squeezed and bottled. The juices are stocked daily, with a shelf life of a day.
The café also offers a variety of pastries, muffins, sausage rolls and chicken puffs.
The cakes come from French Olive, IFS’s premium Italian and French cuisine restaurant. Again, a slice of cake goes for QR20, unmatched market, says Krishnan.
The Coffee Bar at Cafe Anaaz is open 24 hours.
