Harjai Events operates in the food service and hospitality space, delivering dining, catering, and food logistics support to a client base split between individual customers and small and medium enterprises. A typical engagement might start with a corporate client needing catered meals for an office event or a family booking a dining or delivery service for a celebration, and it runs through menu finalisation, execution on the day, and a final billing and feedback cycle once the event or order is complete. Because the business serves both B2C and B2B customers, a successful franchisee ends up managing two very different client rhythms simultaneously: individual bookings that are often one-off and price-sensitive, and SME or corporate accounts that, once won, tend to reorder repeatedly if the first engagement goes well.
This is fundamentally a relationship business wrapped around an operational core, and a franchisee’s week reflects that split. A meaningful share of time goes into direct client interaction: quoting new enquiries, confirming event or order specifications, and following up after delivery to secure repeat business, particularly from SME accounts where a single satisfied corporate client can generate several bookings a year. The remaining time splits between coordinating actual service delivery, whether that’s food preparation, staffing an event, or managing delivery logistics, and handling administrative tasks like invoicing, GST compliance, and vendor coordination. With a working space requirement of around 400 square feet and no home-based option, the franchisee is expected to run this as a proper commercial operation rather than a side venture, which also rules out running it part-time. The franchisor’s systems typically lighten the administrative load, but client relationship management remains squarely the franchisee’s own responsibility, since no software substitutes for the trust that keeps a corporate client rebooking.
A new client generally arrives through referral, direct enquiry, or local outreach, after which the franchisee scopes the requirement, quotes pricing, and confirms logistics before the first delivery or event date. For individual clients this cycle is often short and transactional, but for SME accounts, the first engagement functions as an extended pitch: a business client evaluating a food service provider for a one-off office event is quietly also assessing whether this vendor deserves the next six months of catering business. Retention economics matter more here than acquisition economics precisely because winning a first-time SME client typically costs several times what it takes to keep that client reordering, and a mid-investment format like this one, with a nine-to-eighteen-month break-even window, needs that repeat SME revenue to materialise reasonably early to hit its numbers on schedule. Franchisees who treat every booking as a one-off transaction rather than a relationship to nurture tend to see their break-even timeline drift toward the longer end of that range.
Service businesses of this type typically run on a combination of booking or CRM software to track client enquiries and repeat business, billing tools tied to GST compliance, and basic communication systems for coordinating with clients and vendors around event timelines. The learning curve for a new franchisee is usually manageable within the first few weeks of operation, since these systems are built for operational use rather than technical specialists. What matters more than the software itself is discipline in using it consistently, logging every client interaction and following up on schedule, since in a relationship-driven business, an SME lead that goes unfollowed for even a week can quietly go to a competitor. When technical issues arise, franchisees generally rely on the franchisor’s support channel rather than troubleshooting independently, which is one of the genuine time-saving advantages of the franchise model over building a standalone food service business from scratch.
With staffing requirements ranging from two to eight people, the hiring trajectory in this business tracks closely with booking volume rather than following a fixed schedule. The first hire is typically operational support, someone to help with food preparation, delivery coordination, or event execution, freeing the franchisee to focus on client acquisition and account management rather than being pulled into every delivery personally. As volume grows toward the upper end of that staffing range, franchisees generally add a second layer covering both service delivery and basic client coordination, allowing the business to handle overlapping bookings without the owner personally managing every engagement. In a Tier 2 city, finding reliable staff for food service and event support roles is usually more about local networking and word of mouth than formal recruitment channels, and franchisors that provide training frameworks for onboarding new hires save a meaningful amount of the ramp-up time a first-time operator would otherwise lose to trial and error.
What a franchisor realistically provides after signing includes brand recognition, an established service methodology, initial training, and access to operational systems for billing and client tracking. What the franchisee handles independently, and should go in expecting to handle independently, is the actual day-to-day work of winning and retaining clients in their specific local market. No franchise system, however well designed, replaces the franchisee’s own effort in building the local relationships, particularly SME relationships, that drive repeat revenue. Franchisees who read “franchisor support” as meaning clients will simply arrive tend to be disappointed by month three; franchisees who read it as meaning they won’t have to build every system from scratch tend to find the arrangement genuinely useful.
The franchisees who do well in this business tend to have some prior exposure to client-facing work, whether in sales, hospitality, or general small business management, along with a local network they can draw on for early SME referrals. A general business investor background works, provided the individual is genuinely comfortable with active client relationship management rather than treating the business as a passive investment to be run entirely through hired staff. Investors who prefer to stay behind the scenes and avoid direct client interaction consistently struggle in this category, because in a services business built on repeat SME accounts, the franchisee’s own relationship-building effort is often the single biggest driver of whether break-even arrives at month nine or month eighteen.
No specific professional certification is required, but a general business investor background with comfort in direct client management and some familiarity with hospitality or service delivery tends to translate into a smoother start.
The format is not home-based and requires a dedicated commercial space of around 400 square feet to manage food preparation, staff coordination, and client-facing operations.
Franchisees benefit from brand recognition and an established service methodology during their initial launch period, though building the local SME and individual client relationships that drive ongoing bookings remains primarily the franchisee's own responsibility.
Franchisees typically work with CRM and billing systems built for tracking client bookings, managing GST-compliant invoicing, and coordinating service delivery, with franchisor support available when technical issues arise.
The Harjai Events franchise network currently operates ten centres, built up over fourteen years of franchising, reflecting a steady rather than rapid pace of expansion.
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