Your First Impression Is Delegated

A prospective partner called your office last week. You do not know his name. You were not told he called. The phone rang four times before it was answered, he was asked to repeat himself, and he was promised a callback that arrived two days later as a message with no greeting. He formed an opinion of you in under three minutes. You were not in the room, and you will never know that opinion existed. Most founders believe their personal brand begins when they walk into a meeting. It does not....

min read

A prospective partner called your office last week. You do not know his name. You were not told he called. The phone rang four times before it was answered, he was asked to repeat himself, and he was promised a callback that arrived two days later as a message with no greeting. He formed an opinion of you in under three minutes. You were not in the room, and you will never know that opinion existed. Most founders believe their personal brand begins when they walk into a meeting. It does not. It begins at the first point of contact, and in any business of real size, that point is almost never the founder. It is the assistant who manages your calendar. The sales executive who sends the first proposal. The person who handles your WhatsApp, the receptionist, the coordinator who confirms the meeting. These people speak for you every day, in your name, using your reputation, and most of them have never been told what that reputation is supposed to feel like. Many are loyal, hardworking and capable. That is not the issue. The issue is that nobody ever showed them what a first impression of this founder should feel like. Here is what a prospective client experiences. They do not separate you from your team. They cannot. To them, the speed of a reply is how seriously you take them. The tone of the first email is the tone of your leadership. A proposal with a spelling error, a late response, a careless "will check and let you know" becomes evidence about the person at the top. If this is how the organisation presents itself while trying to win my business, they reason, this is how it will treat me once I have signed. And they never tell you. They simply go quiet. The deal that stalls after a promising first call. The partner who becomes "busy". The client who chooses a competitor and offers a reason that has nothing to do with the real one. Across a year, that is every enquiry that stalled, every proposal left unanswered, every introduction that never became a meeting. This is a personal brand problem, not a staffing one. A founder can spend years refining how they present in a room and still lose the room before they enter it, because the impression was formed by someone else, in a conversation the founder was never part of and never heard about. The founders who avoid this are not the ones with the most polished staff. They are the ones who have made their brand legible to the people around them. Their team knows how the founder speaks, what the business stands for, what warmth looks like in a reply, how a delay should be explained and how a client should feel in the first thirty seconds. The team is not following a script. They are carrying a standard, because someone took the time to define it. When did you last experience your own business the way a stranger does? Not a test call arranged with your team's knowledge. A real one. Send a first enquiry from a number nobody recognises. Notice how long it takes to be answered, what the tone is, and whether you would want to do business with whoever replied. Then ask yourself honestly whether that person sounds like you, and whether you would be proud to be represented that way. If the answer is uncomfortable, it is worth acting on now. Every week of that experience is a week someone forms a verdict about you without your knowledge. Your personal brand is not only what you say. It is everything said on your behalf. If you have a suspicion about how your business is being experienced before you ever walk in, that suspicion deserves a direct, focused brand consultation, not a casual chat. Book yours here: https://www.calendly.com/divyaaadvaani/founder-brand-audit — Divyaa Advaani, Personal Branding Strategist (The author is a personal branding expert. She has clients from 14+ countries. Views personal.)

Can Maharashtra’s Food Industry Take Civic Responsibility?

Amol Deshmukh and Vaibhav Mathkari

Aug 19

3 min read

The food industry can turn everyday business practices into everyday civic action.

We all love eating out. Maharashtra’s food culture is inseparable from its identity. From a small vada pav stall to a five-star hotel, and from a family restaurant to a large wedding caterer, food businesses are part of everyday life. What responsibility does a food business have towards the citizen?

Is serving tasty food enough? Or should restaurants also minimise food and plastic waste, maintain clean kitchens, use safe ingredients, manage waste responsibly and avoid traffic problems outside their premises?

Several countries are already asking these questions. Japan has made reducing food loss a national priority, bringing businesses, government agencies and citizens together to prevent usable food from becoming waste. France has taken steps to reduce single-use plastics, including plastic drinking-water bottles in collective catering. Singapore requires large commercial premises to segregate and manage food waste. The European Union is also working to reduce unnecessary single-use plastics and promote circular packaging.

Maharashtra need not copy them. But they offer one lesson: civic responsibility cannot rest with the government alone. The food industry has a major role to play.

What if Maharashtra took up an 11-point challenge? Imagine major hotels, restaurants, caterers and food establishments voluntarily adopting a civic charter.

First, reduce food waste. Large kitchens should track daily waste and aim to cut it by 25 per cent and then 50 per cent. Food safe for consumption should, wherever possible and legally appropriate, be redirected for human consumption. The rest should go for composting, biogas or other scientific treatment.

Second, reduce unnecessary plastic water bottles. If safe drinking water is available, why automatically give every customer a plastic bottle? Maharashtra can develop a model using glass, steel and refill systems.

Third, rethink packaging. Food delivery has created mountains of packaging. Do we really need all this plastic? Reusable, recyclable and genuinely sustainable alternatives should be preferred.

Fourth, end open dumping of food waste. Restaurants should not send organic waste to roadside dumping points. Segregation and treatment should be part of commercial food-waste management.

Fifth, make healthy choices available. Menus should include lower-salt, lower-sugar and nutritionally balanced options. This is about choice, not telling people what to eat.

Sixth, use cooking oil responsibly. Restaurants should record its use and replacement and ensure used oil goes through authorised channels. Food safety and environmental responsibility should go together.

Seventh, make kitchen hygiene a culture, not a certificate. The World Health Organization’s principles are simple: keep clean; separate raw and cooked food; cook properly; maintain safe temperatures; and use safe water and raw materials. The challenge is making them daily habits.

Eighth, give consumers a voice. A QR code could allow customers to report serious food-safety concerns through a system that records and follows up complaints.

Ninth, use technology intelligently. Artificial intelligence, sensors and digital systems can monitor temperature, hygiene schedules, waste segregation and other safety parameters.

Tenth, think beyond the kitchen. If customers block footpaths, roads or emergency entrances, restaurants should help manage the situation. A successful restaurant should not become a problem for its neighbourhood.

Finally, the Safe Food Oath.

Can Maharashtra’s food industry voluntarily pledge that no known unsafe substance will knowingly be used in food? The proposed oath could state:

“We pledge that we shall not knowingly use any carcinogenic, teratogenic, hepatotoxic, nephrotoxic or allergenic substance as a colouring agent, flavour or taste enhancer, adulterant, sweetener, or preservative or for any other food-processing purpose. We shall use only legally permitted and scientifically evaluated ingredients and additives and maintain transparency and accountability in the preparation and serving of food.”

This is not a call to ban every chemical or synthetic food additive. Many are legally permitted after safety evaluation. The point is simple: unsafe substances should never be shortcuts for making food cheaper, brighter, sweeter or more attractive.

Civic Food Industry Award

Maharashtra could take the idea further by inviting the food and hospitality industry to adopt an 11-point Civic Food Industry Charter. Those meeting the standards could be independently assessed and recognised through a Maharashtra Civic Food Industry Award.

The award would ask not only, “How good is your food?” But also, how much food did you save? How much plastic did you eliminate? How safely do you manage your kitchen? What happens to your food waste? Are your ingredients safe? Do you respect the neighbourhood?

That would give “hospitality” a deeper meaning.

Maharashtra has the institutions, entrepreneurs, technology and, most importantly, a food industry large enough to make a difference.

The government can make regulations. Citizens can demand better standards. But the food industry can lead by choice.

So the question before Maharashtra’s hotels, restaurants, caterers and food businesses is simple: Are you ready to accept the challenge — not just to serve citizens, but to take responsibility for them?

(Deshmukh is a forensics scientist. Mathkari is co-founder, Civic Engineering Foundation.)

Your First Impression Is Delegated

Can Maharashtra’s Food Industry Take Civic Responsibility?

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