Business of Experience Perspective – Anurag Singh, CEO, Temple Street

Temple Street is a Delhi-based QSR brand that pairs chefs from top hotels and restaurants with open kitchens and carefully sourced ingredients, at around ₹500 for two, from outlets in Ashok Nagar and Rajendra Nagar. For Hospemag’s Business of Experience series, CEO Anurag Singh shares how the brand thinks about guest experience.

Q: Where do you begin when designing a guest experience — with the guest, the destination, the story, or the business objective?

For us, it always starts with the guest. We ask ourselves, “What would make someone want to come back?” Good food is important, but so are the little things — the service, the ambience and how comfortable the guest feels.

Q: When you hear the word ‘experience’ in hospitality today, what does it actually mean to you?

Experience is not just about how a place looks. It is about how you feel when you walk in, eat your food and leave. At Temple Street, we want people to feel welcomed, enjoy their food and leave with a reason to come back.

Q: Where can technology make an experience significantly better?

Technology should make things easier, not more complicated. From digital ordering and payments to understanding customer preferences and getting feedback, it can make the guest journey smoother. But the warmth of human hospitality can never be replaced by technology.

Q: What is one trend in experiential hospitality that you think is overhyped?

Making everything “Instagrammable.” A beautiful space can definitely attract people, but if the food and service don’t deliver, the experience doesn’t last. For us, what matters is whether people remember the food and how we made them feel.

Q: How do you turn local culture, food, people and stories into genuine experiences rather than staged attractions?

We believe you don’t have to overdo it. Good food, authentic flavours and genuine hospitality already tell a story. At Temple Street, we try to bring the richness of Indian and South Indian food to people in a way that feels natural, familiar and enjoyable rather than overly staged.

Image: courtesy of Temple Street