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Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/383533
Watching Vij effortlessly love-bomb a room of foodies, you have to wonder what big-screen success would have been in the stars if his business-savvy father had allowed the young Vikram to follow his dream of becoming a Bol- lywood actor instead of sending him to Mumbai's prestigious Elphinstone College to study chemistry. But after an unpromising start ("I wasn't smart enough to be a scientist"), Vij decided to follow in the footsteps of "an uncle of an uncle" and go into the restaurant indus- try instead: "I'd explore those artistic feelings and be a stage actor with food, not lines." When Vij opened his first restaurant in Vancouver, a 16-seat hole-in-the-wall on Broadway between Granville and Hem- lock, legend has it that he needed $100 a day to break even, often ringing in an order of naan bread himself to make up the difference. Nowa- days that break-even figure is $20,000 a day. The Vij empire is a hungry beast that needs constant feed- ing and currently includes Vij's on West 11th and the more casual Rangoli restaurant next door, award-winning food truck Vij's Railway Express in Vancouver, part interest in a market stall in Victoria called Vij's Sutra and Shanik Restaurant in Seattle (owned and run by Vij's wife and busi- ness partner, Meeru Dhalwala). Then there are the new kids on the block: My Shanti in South Surrey, an 88-seater (with a 30-seat patio) that opened this May and cost $2.7 million to build; and the latest addition to the family, a new Vij's location on Cambie Street that's set to open in December (when the "old" Vij's will become Mian Bawarchi, the concept for which the restaurateur is keeping under wraps: "I want it to be a big surprise"). Finally, there are the cookbooks and the $7-mil- lion, 2,600-square-metre production plant that produces 15 different SKUs in the Vij's At Home prepared-food range (seven vegetarian and eight meat), which currently sell in more than 400 stores across Canada. Vij admits the plant is currently underutilized (with year-over-year growth less than half of what was originally projected), but he's powering through the paperwork nec- essary to get Americans gobbling up Vij's "Masala" and "Mother-in-law" cur- ries by the end of the year. Restaurateurs opening more restau- rants is not news, but parlaying that restaurant success into a nationwide take-home food industry and a main- stream TV career is something else. It's in that desire to expand beyond res- taurants and into people's homes—to show and tell about Indian food—that you discover the key to Vikram Vij's drive for success. He is a man on a mission to con- vert us all, one lamb popsicle at a time, to the many and var- ied tastes of Indian cuisine. "He's done some- thing remarkable," says ex-Vancouver magazine food edi- tor Jamie Maw. "He's made Indian cuisine accessible; he's pulled the curtain back and revealed it in a way that goes light years past butter chicken. He supports his brand with cookbooks, his narra- tive of coming here, the aunties in the kitchen, and he said, 'There are no secrets here; you can make my lamb popsicles at home'—which, of course, everybody does and takes credit for." A few days before My Shanti opens in Surrey's upscale Morgan Crossing neighbourhood, with craftsmen add- ing finishing touches and his all-women crew continuing to familiarize them- selves with the kitchen, an impressively un-flurried Vij gives me the tour and pours chai before settling down to talk. "I want to be the Nike of the food indus- try," he declares, his expressive hands dancing in the air. "I want to bring my Indian food to India, the USA, China. I want to have a business beyond me. Peo- ple die but names stand; it's not about 'Vikram Vij' as an ego or an individual— it's the legacy of 'Vij's.' With the pack- aged food, it's as though I went into their kitchens and said, 'I will help you make a delicious Indian meal.' You still have to make the rice and naan, but someone in Winnipeg can now enjoy the greatness of Indian cuisine any night of the week." Fighting to push beyond the ubiqui- tous butter chicken is part of Vij's rai- son d'être. He arrived in Canada in 1989 with a one-way ticket and a six-month 52 BCBusiness OctOber 2014 "I want to be the Nike of the food industry. I want to bring my Indian food to India, the USA, China. I want to have a business beyond me. People die but names stand, it's not about 'Vikram Vij' as an ego or an individual; it's the legacy of 'Vij's'"