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How a former Harvard MBA turned Bain consultant co-founded Dishoom and scaled the Indian fine dining business to $180m in sales and a $400m valuation. 

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Today, we’ll talk about the smart business moves behind Dishoom, the Indian fine dining restaurant popular in the UK (where I recently crushed a meal for the first time).

Also this week:

• The wild economics of smoking
• Winston Churchill Loved Stonks
• Red Bull’s Most Dangerous Stunt
• …and them wild posts (including Bill Ackman)

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If I told you a “Harvard MBA grad turned Bain consultant launched a successful business that gained traction by gamifying the payment experience”, what industry would you guess?

Fintech? EdTech? Mobile gaming? Sports gambling? Stock trading? Dating app? A dating app that connects sports gamblers with stock traders?

How about Indian fine dining?

There’s no way you guessed that. Stop it.

But that is the exact business co-founded by Harvard MBA and ex-Bain consultant Shamil Thakrar.

In 2010, he opened the restaurant Dishoom in London along with his cousin Kavi (Shamil is now 54 years old while Kavi is 44 years old). Dishoom has since grown to 11 locations in the United Kingdom with annual sales hitting £137m (or ~$180m).

I recently had my first experience with Dishoom at the chain’s newest location in Glasgow, Scotland. It was with my wife and kid.

I snapped this image below before absolutely destroying the meal (including one bite where I wrapped the grilled paneer and a masala prawn inside of a garlic naan and dipped it repeatedly in ruby curry sauce).

The investing team at private equity firm L Catterton — which is 40% owned by LVMH head Bernard Arnault — clearly had a similar experience with Dishoom’s spread because it made a size-able investment in the restaurant chain at a £300m (or ~$400m) valuation in August.

The next location for the cult restaurant chain is New York City in 2026.

This means that Americans will soon experience the magic of Dishoom gamification.

In a genius marketing move, patrons dining before 6pm — and in a group of 12 or less between Monday and Thursday — get their entire meal comped if they roll the number “6” on a dice.

As most of you readers will know because you paid attention in Grade 11 math, the expected value of rolling a “6” is equivalent to a discount of 16.67% (1 out of 6). As a Happy Hour promotion, that is a pretty underwhelming discount compared to:

• “Buy 1 Get 1” (50% off)
• 30% off select drinks (err, 30% off)
• Free Jalapeño Poppers (delicious)

But because the Dishoom promotion involves gambling, it really activates those dopamine pathways and entices customers to eat during busy hours and “win” a free meal.

Through this sorcery, the 16.67% expected value goes from a subpar discount to a Skinner Box Dopamine Extravaganza. 

Thakrar’s decision to offer a discount dice roll stands out among a number of smart culinary and hospitality decisions at Dishoom.

I did a 4,000 word breakdown including:

• The Bombay-Iranian inspiration
• Dishoom's historical financials 

• Whether I was able to roll a "6" and get a free meal

• UK's Indian food market (Curry Houses to Michelin Stars)
• L Catterton's recent investments (Including Birkenstock)
• Notes from a Harvard Business School case study on Dishoom's operating and marketing playbook

Hit that blue button to read the whole piece:

The wild economics of smoking

Around the late-2000s, one of the most jarring business and social changes I remember was the disappearance of cigarettes from bars, clubs and restaurants.

It’s so crazy that people used to go out at night, step into a bar or restaurant and instantly smell like an ashtray. Just all over our clothes in our hair. We probably didn’t realize it because everyone smelt like an ashtray.

Then inside smoking was banned and we all moved on, requiring 2-3 fewer showers per day.

This jarring change was a whiplash for me, though.

Because just as cigarettes disappeared from public spaces in North America, I moved to Vietnam.

Today, about 80% of the world’s cigarette smokers live in low or middle-income countries. Those devious tobacco execs had aggressively marketed to young and female smokers in developing markets to make up for lost smokers in the West.

They lobbied like crazy, kept prices low, made flavours for local markets and did packaging “innovation” (selling individual smokes).

I saw it everywhere while living in Southeast Asia for 5 years.

Since then, my mental model of tobacco companies has been that they are completely cooked in North America while thriving in the poorer regions.

Turns out I underestimated those wily tobacco execs.

The Economist has a fascinating article on how tobacco stocks have outperformed tech stock (NASDAQ in the recent years and it’s a textbook example of “price-inelastic” buyers:

• Over the past decade, the # of US smokers has declined by 20m and the total # of cigarettes sold is down by a 1/3rd.
• So, cigarette firms have charged more to their most committed smokers (operating margins have grown from 50% to 60%).
• In 2025, cigarette makers in the US will make operating profit of $22B.

Certainly, some of that stock performance may be due to tobacco’s pivot to vapes and chewy pouches.

But cigarettes are still very much part of the story. While the industry goes away, only the most addicted smokers are left. And cigarette companies have been raising prices increasingly faster (with no impact on demand).

In 2017, a pack of Marlboros went up 2.9% YoY (vs. inflation of 2.1%). In 2024, they raised the price of Marlboros by 7% (vs. inflation of 3%).

Imperial Brands said on an earnings call, “[W]e can continue to take pricing to offset volume declines” (while British American Tobacco recently stated its “price/mix more than offset volume decline.”)

Winston Churchill Loved Stonks

While we’re on the topic of the British Empire (Dishoom) and stock markets (smokes), we need to talk about how much Winston Churchill loved YOLO-ing equities.

Andrew Ross Sorkin has a new book on the 1929 stock market crash (“1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation”), which is obviously super timely because the current AI wave is looking a bit…ugh…bubbly.

Anyway, there are some incredible tidbit on Churchill aka The British Bulldog being extra bullish on American stocks right before The Great Depression:

Churchill no longer had the kind of money his parents did; he did not inherit significant sums and he wasn’t an heir to the family estate at Blenheim Palace, which belonged to his cousin. Desperate to achieve the wealth of those around him, he quickly opened a new trading account, intent on reserving his funds, valued at about £20,000, for speculation. “This ‘mass of manoeuvre’ is of the utmost importance,” he told his wife, “and must not be frittered away.” […]

Churchill’s mind remained on money. He was fascinated with the American way of investing. He gave his new friend at E. F. Hutton control over his share account while he was traveling. “His firm has the best information about the American market,” he told his wife. “All this looks very confiding—but I am sure it will prove wise.” […]

Inspired by such tales and the confidence “Barney” had in the current market, Churchill began to play the market even more heavily. His account had a trading volume in stocks—buying and selling—of more than £400,000 in a week, much of it on margin. […]

Two of the most popular comments when I posted this on X was “incredible, he’s a degen” and “one of us, one of us”.

Churchill was in New York on Black Monday and despite seeing the madness, had this to say, “No one could doubt that this financial disaster, huge as it is, cruel as it is to thousands, is only a passing episode in the march of a valiant and serviceable people who by fierce experiment are hewing new paths for man, and showing to all nations much that they should attempt and much that they should avoid.”

It took Churchill a long time to financially recover from this L:

Through the 1930s, he remained functionally broke, barely staying ahead of creditors by taking writing fees to publish a torrent of articles, including one about being hit by the car in Manhattan. After a long-overdue bill from his shirtmaker threatened to push him into personal bankruptcy, an Austrian-born financier named Sir Henry Strakosch bailed him out. When Churchill became prime minister, he finally had an expense account to match his appetites. A massive book deal for his World War II memoir, as well as relatively lavish sums for film rights to previous books, gave him the financial security he had lacked for most of his life, and when he died in 1965, he had money to leave his heirs.

Links and Memes 

Red Bull’s Mt. Everest Stunt May Have Been Its Most Dangerous: Energy-crack-drink-gasoline-tasting-beverage firm Red Bull is legendary for its marketing stunts.

A related stat: Red Bull spends 35% of sales on marketing, which is significantly more than Coca-Cola or Pepsi (<10% of sales).

Anyway, Red Bull went wild for its latest marketing play. Polish ski mountaineer Andrzej Bargiel climbed Mt. Everest and then ski’d down…and did it all without supplemental oxygen. Going sans bottled oxygen was a world’s first and — let’s be honest — none of us even knew “ski mountaineer” was a job.

This was particularly dangerous because Bargiel spent 16 hours in the “Death Zone”, which is incredibly ominous. And it’s so named because that describes a part of Everest that is above 8,000 meters (26,247 feet) of altitude where oxygen levels are 33% of normal and insufficient to sustain human life for more than 18-20 hours.

The 31-minute YouTube video has some insane visuals and a spot-on top comment: “this is somehow simultaneously one of the most peaceful and terrifying videos I’ve ever seen”

Hilariously, Bargiel had to chug a Red Bull after completing the stunt, which is probably the last thing in the world you need to do after spending 16 hours in the “Death Zone” but, hey, the bill isn’t going to pay itself.

 ***

Some other links for your weekend consumption:

New Toy Story 5 trailer dropped…and the villain looks like an iPad. This is obviously ironic since Steve Jobs yelled at enough people to make both Pixar and the iPad become successes. It’s an interesting idea but I’m with Quentin Tarantino, who says that the first three Toy Story films were the perfect trilogy and there is no creative reason to make more.

“Bring the big leagues to Mexico City”…Nate Silver makes the case for the NBA, MLB, NFL or NHL to bring a team to Mexico City (which is the largest North American market without a Big 4 sports team).

Nothing in the world can prepare you for how Boris Johnson…pronounces the words “AI” and “ChatGPT”.

The step-by-step Dream Sheet that Shohei Ohtani…created in high school to help achieve his baseball goals.

The CEO of Walmart Doug McMillon is retiring at 59…he grew up in Bentonville, Arkansas and went to the University of Arkansas. His first job at Walmart was as an hourly summer associate in 1984 and then took the top job in 2014. In the past decade, Walmart stock is up more than 3x and McMillon built an e-commerce beast second only after Amazon.

Berkshire Hathaway invested $4.3B into Alphabet…which makes it the 10th largest position for the stock conglomerate. This was probably one of Buffett’s final greenlights on the investing front. Berkshire famously shunned tech before smashing it out the park with its Apple investment in 2016. But, interestingly, Munger and Buffett have regretted missing Google’s IPO. They actually had insight on the company because GEICO was buying so many insurance search ads and they knew how effective it was. Full circle.

Google also released its new Gemini 3 model this week…and it’s very impressive. The model has been used to “one shot 3D LEGO editors” and create full games from a text prompt. Professor Ethan Mollick has a great breakdown on the very very impressive Gemini 3.

Big Daddy Bezos is BACK…in his first official operating role since leaving the Amazon CEO job in 2021. He is now co-CEO of Prometheus Projects, an AI startup that has poached dozens of employees from OpenAI and DeepMind and has raised $6.2B (mostly from money in Bezos couch cushions). The startup is part of the “physical AI” wave and will use AI to discover new engineering and manufacturing techniques for computers, cars, and spacecraft.

Famed short-seller Michael Burry…has made notable bets against major AI plays including Nvidia and Palantir. He also recently de-registered his hedge fund and looks to ride these bets out on his own (without investor money). QTR Fringe Finance has a solid breakdown of the play and what it says about the market.

Microsoft Satya Nadella CEO…replied to a Bearly AI post about Microsoft Excel with maybe the greatest hoodie ever seen in Corporate America.

...and them wild posts:

Finally, the absolute wildest meme of the week was definitely billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman sharing dating advice on X and included the idea to approach a potential romantic partner by asking “May I meet you?” and the post went nuclear with 35m views.

Now, before making any knee-jerk jokes, I want to say that I think he’s coming from the right place. Ackman frames his advice around the idea that “many young men…find it difficult to meet young women in a public setting” and “online culture has destroyed the ability to spontaneously meet strangers.

I got into a long-term relationship before Tinder and Instagram. Based on everything I’ve heard from my single friends, that sounds like a huge blessing. Sounds like past decade of online dating has scarred people.

But obviously, the internet went full cynical by noting that Ackman is a billionaire and could literally say anything to close the deal. His advice was for pre-billionaire and single days, though. But then people noted he’s 6’3 and a good-looking dude (his current wife was reported to be seeing Brad Pitt when Ackman started courting her).

While “May I meet you?” has some serious 1920s energy and is massively dorky, it’s not the worst thing ever. It was just so out of left field. The hit rate on this opener is probably under 0.8% but...as...Wayne Gretzky...Michael Scott said...”you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”. That’s the real point here and, also, the whole thing popped off because of how awkward “May I meet you?” sounds. Net-net, there will be at least one more baby conceived because of this post.

The Know Your Meme page has a solid blow-by-blow and ny favourite observation was from Lulu Cheng Meservey:

Unironically, “May I meet you” has just become a killer pickup line for this exact demographic: 1) gets a laugh; 2) inside joke creates shared connection; and 3) signals interest with low pressure.

But the only reason I’m telling you any of this is because the memes were absolutely out of control including a YOLO DM to Sydney Sweeney and people from both sexes trying the pick-up line….and these absolute gems:

Written by me, Trung Phan.

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