'Service Ready' is ready for service
Yay, a hospitality book written by a woman! A Q&A with Chai Pani co-founder Molly Irani
I learned about Molly Irani’s hospitality and leadership book, Service Ready, last summer. For nearly a year, I’ve looked forward to the book’s release date — today! — knowing Irani produced a valuable, tactical, helpful book about hospitality inside the restaurants — now plural — that she co-founded with her husband, chef Meherwan Irani, over 15 years ago. And to be honest, I’m particularly excited that this book was written by a woman.
That’s because… if you’ve read a book about the craft of hospitality in the last 20 years, it was probably written by a man. No shade to Danny Meyer or Will Guidara, both appropriately lauded New York-based fine dining operators who are also authors of two prominent modern hospitality books. Setting the Table, Meyer’s volume on the power good service, was published in 2006, and Unreasonable Hospitality, Guidara’s next-gen take on the business of building a world-class restaurant, was published four years ago with a follow-up coming next month. Both explore the business of fine dining and the joy of giving customers more than they expect. (Once, in coverage for Fast Company, I called Guidara, who once worked under Meyer, his “heir apparent to the legacy of being nice.”)
In contrast, Chai Pani started as a single-location Indian street food restaurant in Asheville, North Carolina in 2009, launched quickly with the help of friends, family, and about $60,000. Since then, it’s expanded to Decatur, Georgia and Washington, DC. The team launched a second concept, Botiwalla, with locations in Atlanta, Georgia and Charlotte and Asheville, in North Carolina. Meherwan also launched a line of spices, Spicewalla, offering restaurant diners (and not-yet-converted diners!) spice blends for home use that are roasted, ground, and packed by hand.
It’s a remarkable business success story, made more remarkable when retold through the eyes of Molly Irani, a compassionate but resolute industry leader willing to share her story — both struggles and success — with the industry at large.
When we talked last week, Molly compared today’s book release to sending her child to kindergarten. “It’s a combination of: you’re really ready to set the thing free, and then on the day it’s terrifying,” she told me. “Now it’s more the feeling of, okay, we don’t actually get to control what happens next. It’s the same thing as parenting; we can’t control how much humanity our children are going to encounter… much to my dismay, by the way.”
It’s a fitting comparison. Molly leans into her role as a mother, both literally and figuratively, at Chai Pani. Her Instagram handle is @chaipanimom, an unofficial but appropriately-titled role inside the growing business that became a huge part of this book offering a kind of warm and welcome nurturing that doesn’t typically show up in business stories.
“I think women can see someone being referred to as mom in a business construct, and it’s… annoying,” Molly told me. “People sometimes feel offended by that, like we shouldn’t be expecting women to have to play the mother role to other people in their businesses.” (No lies there.)
The book opens with a recounting of Chai Pani’s 2022 James Beard Award win for Outstanding Restaurant, a major external validation of the team’s work in both the kitchen and the dining room. It’s also validation of the restaurant’s different way of operating, of building largely outside the brightest spotlights of America’s biggest cities and fine-dining centers. The Iranis and their team celebrate these differences with confidence, and it shows.
There are plenty of lessons in this book that I could bullet point out for any budding or evolving restaurant operator, but Molly does it beautifully on her own. Instead, during our interview we talked through some of the particularities of Molly’s restaurateur-turned-author journey, which I found both exceptional and easily applicable; her story is inspiring and practical at the same time.
I love handing the mic to strong, supportive, powerful women in restaurants! And I love that the next great hospitality book is written in Molly Irani’s handwriting.
Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.