Aditya Wanwari is Toast Inc's founder, which looks after multiple Mumbai restaurants. The 28-year-old DJ-turned-entrepreneur has taken a lot of risks in his professional life to reach this level of success. While doing music shows at several restaurants, clubs and hotels, Aditya developed a keen interest in the hospitality industry. His interest turned into a passion and, eventually, his career.
For Aditya, success didn't happen in just one night. He has to start everything from scratch, face some failure, get up again, and go on. Not all his ventures succeeded, but when he learned from his setbacks, there was no looking back. Among several restaurants that the entrepreneur handles, one of them is Donna Deli.
Aditya Wanwari's Donna Deli restaurant turned a year old. In just one year, it has become quite popular. When asked about the one-year journey, Aditya revealed that they were initially going to start the restaurant in 2019, and the name was Bloc. However, that didn't happen. In 2020, the pandemic brought everything to a standstill.
The entrepreneur shares, "Thankfully, the lockdown hit and that concept of a bar was sidelined and cancelled. Donna Deli was formulated through the lockdown. I wrote the menu and concept in the first two months of the lockdown and did trials and procurement of ingredients and crockery in the midst of the peak lockdown. It was super challenging as most of the agencies were closed."
He adds, "The beauty of this is that we had a lot of time to conceptualise the branding as we literally had nothing else to do through the lockdown. We also got our ingredients and equipments at sale prices as overall purchasing were down and people wanted to give off their inventory."
Donna Deli owner Aditya Wanwari calls the restaurant one of the special eateries of Toast Inc as they had to shut down all the other outlets during that time. With DD, they got a chance to rise and flourish again. As the restaurant completes the year, Aditya is thankful for the thrilling journey and all the learnings in the last year. The restaurateur also plans to open a second outlet of the same restaurant in Delhi in mid-2023.