Meet the Founders with 50 years of legacy, Building a Café Rooted in Indianess
Amar and Sonal Ohri on building Qaffeine Bistro around Indian coffee, regional flavours and personalised hospitality, drawing on the Ohri’s Group’s decades of experience in Hyderabad’s restaurant industry.
Hyderabad’s café culture is evolving, with customers looking for spaces that offer more than coffee and quick bites. At Qaffeine Bistro in Banjara Hills, founder Amar Ohri and co-founder Sonal Ohri are bringing together Indian coffee, regional flavours, contemporary café dining and personalised hospitality in an all-day format.
“Qaffeine came from recognising this shift and wanting to create a space that felt relevant to the way people live today. Coffee provided the foundation, but the vision was always broader: to create an all-day destination that brings together specialty coffee, thoughtful food and warm hospitality, while also celebrating India’s rich coffee culture,” says Amar Ohri.
Drawing on the Ohri’s Group’s nearly five-decade hospitality legacy, Amar says the idea was to approach the café format differently while retaining the principles that have shaped the family’s experience in the industry.
“Hospitality, at its core, remains about consistency, attention to detail and understanding the guest. Those principles do not change whether you are operating a large restaurant or an intimate café,” he says.
At Qaffeine, the focus extends beyond the menu to the details of the guest experience. Each cup of coffee is accompanied by a card bearing the name of the person who prepared it, creating a personal connection between the barista and the customer.
Amar says the intention was to move away from the idea of a conventional restaurant operating in a café setting. Instead, Qaffeine was conceived as a place that could accommodate different needs throughout the day, from breakfast and coffee meetings to work sessions, brunch and relaxed evening dining.
“We moved away from the idea that a café needs to be limited to coffee and quick bites. Qaffeine is designed to move naturally through the day, from breakfast and coffee meetings to brunch, work sessions and relaxed evening dining,” he says.
For Sonal Ohri, the Indian identity of the café begins with its food and beverage programme rather than with the addition of Indian elements to an international format. The aim, she says, was to work with familiar flavours and present them in ways that suit contemporary café dining.
“It is really about elevating familiar Indian flavours and finding a contemporary way to bring them into classic café formats,” she says.
Qaffeine Bistro, founder Amar Ohri and co-founder Sonal Ohri.
The menu reflects this approach through dishes such as Nihari Benedicts, which bring the richness of Nihari into the hollandaise of the familiar Eggs Benedict, alongside Paneer Akuri and Parsi Style Keema Par Eedu. The coffee menu includes Kaapi Nariyal, Mysore Silk and Signature Iced Indian Filter Coffee.
“For us, it is not about simply ‘Indianising’ a dish, but about understanding how Indian flavours, techniques and references can complement and enhance contemporary café dining, while making them an intrinsic part of the Qaffeine experience,” Sonal says.
The emphasis on Indian coffee also extends to the Baaghini Blend, which brings together coffee sourced from six regions across the country: Nagaland, Wayanad, Yercaud, Koraput, Coorg and Chikmagalur. The café’s design draws on Indian heritage through a Baaghini-inspired tiger motif, while its food programme includes handcrafted focaccia and bakes, along with a croissant experience featuring six house-made butters inspired by different flavours.
Sonal says the intention was to bring these elements together as a unified experience rather than treat coffee, food, design and hospitality as separate aspects of the brand.
“We approached Qaffeine as one complete experience, where coffee, food, design and hospitality all tell the same story of contemporary India,” she says.
Beyond its menu and design, the founders see the café as a neighbourhood space that can become part of people’s everyday routines. Sonal says customers should be able to visit for a morning coffee, a meeting, a leisurely meal or a family dinner, with the space adapting to different occasions.
“We believe a café today can be much more than a place to have coffee. It can become part of someone’s everyday rhythm, a place for a morning ritual, a meeting, a work session, a leisurely meal or simply catching up with friends and having a hearty family dinner,” she says.
For the founders, the idea also reflects a larger question about hospitality in an increasingly fast-paced culture where many dining experiences are built around convenience. Sonal says Qaffeine aims to offer customers a reason to pause, spend time and return.
“At Ohri’s, our legacy has always been rooted in the belief that hospitality is at the heart of the experience. In today’s increasingly fast-paced, grab-and-go culture, it is easy to overlook how much genuine hospitality can shape the way a guest feels,” she says. “With Qaffeine, we wanted to bring that back to create a space where people are not just served, but welcomed, looked after and encouraged to stay a little longer.”