Service Ready: A Story of Love, Restaurants, and the Power of Hospitality

In this can-do debut, Irani mines her and her husband’s experience of founding their Asheville, N.C., Indian restaurant, Chai Pani, for upbeat business advice. In 2009, the pair had been “diligently slogging away at our jobs to pay the bills” when a midlife crisis inspired them to open a restaurant based on the flavorful Indian street food Irani’s husband had grown up eating. Despite the lingering effects of the Great Recession and little restaurant industry experience, they set about putting their idea into practice—securing financing, recruiting staff, creating a colorful, energetic design aesthetic, and buying and converting a space within just two months. Irani spends much of the account discussing how she and her husband learned to create workable systems, and invested in their employees by assigning roles that catered to individual strengths and reimagining service traditions to ensure team bonding. (She also describes tackling unexpected challenges raised by the Covid-19 pandemic, during which the restaurant briefly transitioned to take-out only.) Irani seamlessly interweaves the Chai Pani story with applicable business lessons, and she’s frank about the many hurdles founders face, even as she highlights the heady, unexpected joys of bringing one’s dream to life. Aspiring entrepreneurs and foodies alike will savor this. (Mar.)