Since 2006
One restaurant in Narayanguda, and a plate full of biryani anyone could afford.
Mehfil was started in 2006 by two founders, and the idea they began with has held for 20 years.
Narayanguda · 2006
around 700 grams₹50 a plate
The students who lived around the first restaurant liked its biryani, but they could not afford to eat it often, and neither could many of the bachelors living away from home or the everyday customers across the city. So in 2006 Mehfil made a plate for them and gave it a name: the Single Biryani, around 700 grams of biryani for 50 rupees, made for one person.
It was a plate full of biryani, not a smaller portion sold for less. The idea was to keep the food exactly as it was and find a way to make that plate affordable, rather than shrinking it to lower the price. Many biryani restaurants in Hyderabad sell a single today, but in 2006 that was not how biryani was sold, and everything Mehfil has done since has been about keeping that plate within reach.
The same restaurant did the opposite for groups that year. It put the whole biryani handi on the menu, so a family or a group of friends could order one sealed pot of biryani for their own mehfil instead of several separate plates. The Single was made for one person and the handi for the whole table, and both came from the same idea: a generous biryani that people could afford, whatever the occasion.
Who started it
Two founders, and a hotel that was already 71 years old.
Mehfil Group of Restaurants was founded in 2006 by Mr. Jaleel Rooz and Mr. Mubeen Pasha. The name Mehfil means a gathering, and that idea is still at the heart of the group. Its parent company is the historic, iconic Grand Hotel in Abids, which opened in 1935, 91 years ago, and made biryani available to everyone, not only the palace.
Grand Hotel was already 71 years old when the first Mehfil opened, and Mr. Jaleel Rooz still runs it today, but Mehfil had to earn its own name from the start. Mr. Anil Verma, the group’s chief executive, has been with Mehfil since that first year.
- Mr. Jaleel RoozFounder
- Mr. Mubeen PashaFounder
- Mr. Anil VermaChief executive
2006 to 2011
Five years passed before a second one opened.
The second restaurant, in Attapur, opened in 2011. Until then there was one restaurant and a promise that was easy to make and hard to keep: a plate full of biryani for ₹50. Every plate had to pay for the meat, the rice and the spices, and for the gas, the rent and the people who cook. When a price is held while all of that costs more, the usual result is a smaller plate, or worse food on it.
Mehfil changed the way it bought instead. It started buying its rice, meat and spices directly from farms and manufacturers, and cut out the distributors and middlemen who each add a margin along the way. Getting that right took five years. Once it worked in one restaurant it could be repeated in others, and the 15 years since have brought 17 more restaurants, in some years three or four at once. The business has grown through volume, and the plate has stayed the priority.
How the buying works is set out in full by the group’s chief executive.
- 061 in 2006
- 07
- 08
- 09
- 10
- 111 in 2011
- 12
- 131 in 2013
- 14
- 151 in 2015
- 16
- 171 in 2017
- 181 in 2018
- 192 in 2019
- 20
- 21
- 221 in 2022
- 231 in 2023
- 244 in 2024
- 253 in 2025
- 262 in 2026
2026
19 restaurants, three formats and two countries.
Today the group runs 19 restaurants: 17 in Hyderabad and 2 in Dubai, where they trade as Grand Mehfil. Most are Mehfil restaurants, serving the biryani, Irani chai and kebabs the group began with, and haleem during Ramzan. Mehfil Exclusive adds Turkish grills, Arabian mandi and Mediterranean platters, in a dining room built for them, and Box O’ Mehfil has a menu of its own, from biryanis to Indian and Chinese boxes and bowls, rolls, chicken wings and curry combos, sold over its own counter in the same building as Mehfil Gachibowli.
Handi biryani is cooked at 18 of them, 16 in Hyderabad and both in Dubai. Wherever the group has gone, the plate has gone with it, and so has the thinking behind its price.
Mehfil has never run a big advertising campaign. Most new customers still come because someone they know told them about it, and the volume that brings is what keeps the price within reach. The families who kept coming back, through the good years and the hard ones, are the reason there are 19 restaurants today.
The history page has every opening, year by year, and every restaurant, with a map and directions, is on the branches page.
- Restaurants
- 19
- Cook the handi
- 18
- Years in
- 20
A plate full of biryani for one, a whole handi for your gathering, and a place for everyone at the table. That was the idea in Narayanguda in 2006, and it is still the idea in all 19 restaurants today.
