Mumbai, May 19: In one of the most candid and sharply observed conversations on India’s food and beverage design landscape, SprintCo and FlatpackCo Founder & CEO, Sona Mantri shares her journey on design philosophy and insights into building successful restaurant brands on the latest episode of InControversial by Pooja Chaudhri.
As the creative force behind more than 3,500 restaurant spaces across India and international markets, Sona Mantri has shaped bespoke F&B environments for some of the industry’s most recognised brands. During the conversation, she spoke about design, scale, consumer behaviour, and the factors that separate enduring restaurant brands from those who struggle to sustain beyond their initial growth phase.
From iconic QSRs and cafés to luxury bars, airports, and high-footfall hospitality formats, her portfolio spans brands including Burger King, Haldiram’s, Social, The Hood, Third Wave Coffee, Sukh Sagar, Maiz Mexican Kitchen, and Taco Bell. With over two decades of experience, she has worked at the intersection of design, operational efficiency and consumer psychology. In a conversation filled with honest industry perspectives, she challenged conventional ideas around restaurant success and highlighted the often-overlooked operational details that quietly influence customer retention and long-term growth.
Her entry into restaurant design began instinctively, as SprintCo Founder & CEO Sona Mantri shared, “I was told I only had nights to make it work and somehow, that challenge changed everything. I fixed the problem so well that it led to more projects, more businesses, and eventually my first Pizza Hut on Brigade Road, Bengaluru. I had just started, so for me, that was huge. Entrepreneurship really happened through solving real-world problems.”
She reveals her widely followed 70:30 design framework, where 70% of a restaurant’s build remains structurally standardised for operational consistency and efficiency. The remaining 30% allows room for creativity, local identity, and brand storytelling. This philosophy also drives FlatpackCo, her off-site restaurant build venture that is currently helping reduce project timelines by nearly 50%. The long-term vision is to build fully operational restaurants within seven to ten days.
From counter placements and coffee machine positioning to acoustics, scent design and reverse exhaust systems that subtly direct aromas toward guests, she described this as an invisible layer of design thinking that influence customer repeat visits.
Speaking about superficial design trends in the industry, she said, “Just putting a lot of graphics, films, or posters on the walls does not necessarily work. People may take pictures and share them online, but the real question is, will they keep coming back? That is where thoughtful strategy and holistic design become important.”
The conversation holds up a clear takeaway: successful F&B spaces are built not just on aesthetics, but on deeply considered systems, operational intelligence, and meaningful customer experiences. SprintCo and FlatpackCo Founder & CEO, Sona Mantri emphasised that long-term success comes from balancing functionality with storytelling and designing spaces that customers genuinely want to return to.