Dunkin' Donuts head chef Peter D'Mello's desi twist bags him best employee award

NEW DELHI: Dunkin'Donuts knows the value of the man behind its popular motichoor laddoos and petal gulab jamun doughnuts. So when it came to picking the annual CEO's club champion award for best employee recently, Peter D'Mello was a natural choice.

The chain's head chef has been responsible for the company's biggest innovations in India so far — those laddoos and doughnuts cited above.

The award, which includes an overseas holiday, saw D'Mello beat out rivals from the sales and marketing teams, which usually win such awards.

D'Mello, Dunkin's third employee, was poached from Crowne Plaza Hotels, Middle-East, three years ago by the promoters of exclusive franchisee partner Jubilant FoodWorks. Now, he's travelling to rural Bihar to get an idea of local cuisine nuances to implement in the menu.

"Who knows, there could be an application for a doughnut or a burger somewhere," said the soft-spoken D'Mello, 37, a Goan who studied at Cornell University in New York and set up a product development labkitchen at the Jubilant FoodWorks headquarters in Noida two years back.

Jubilant is also the Domino's franchisee in India. Meanwhile, Felix Daniel Mathews, head chef, beverages, has been travelling to coffee plantations all over the world. He's created versions of the classic lemon ice tea and the dunkaccino coffee base, the first of which has been replicated by Dunkin' Donuts UK.

In the two years it's been in India, Dunkin' Donuts has opened about 30 outlets, mostly in the north, establishing a lead in the doughnutcoffee space over rival Krispy Kreme even as it battles the slump in the overall quick-service restaurant sector.