Why I Left Stable Banking Job to Build a Restaurant

I didn't start with a business plan. I started with curiosity.

Hello, I’m Ayush, co-owner of T’s and Sicily.

Back when I was studying in +2, there was a small café near my college. I used to walk past it almost every day, and something about that place pulled me in — not just the coffee, but the idea behind it. A small space where people came together, sat down, and just existed for a while. I used to look at it and think, "What if I had a place like this someday?" The idea stayed with me like a quiet hum in the back of my mind. But back then, I had no experience, no money, and no one to guide me. So I did what felt safe. I went into banking.

I worked in a bank for ten whole years, including at Nabil Bank. Banking taught me discipline, structure, and how numbers work — skills I didn't know I'd need later. But the café dream never really left. It just waited quietly in the background, patient and persistent, like it knew its time would come.

And when the time felt right, I decided to take the risk.

The first step was finding the right people. I spoke to Diwas, who had just returned from Australia with cooking experience and sharp marketing ideas. I talked to Shashank, who was working at Aloft and understood how the hospitality industry moved. Diwas then brought in Rushka to help with management. Just like that, we became a team of four. I like to describe us as the four wheels of a car — remove one wheel and the car doesn't just slow down. It stops completely. That's how important each one of us was to this journey.

A lot of our brainstorming happened during Covid. There was no business yet — only ideas, late-night conversations, and a growing excitement that something real could come out of this. Before lockdown, we had already bought a pizza machine, ready to hit the ground running. But when the time came, we couldn't use it. Time was running out, and we had to make a decision. 

Our first setup was a small cloud kitchen in Sano Bharyang. We used to deliver pizzas ourselves — hand to hand, door to door. Some days we got only five to seven orders. Five to seven. On days like those, it would have been easy to question everything. But we didn't see that as failure. We treated it as training. Every small order was a lesson. Every delivery was practice. We were learning the business by doing it, and that mattered more than any number on a screen.

Instead of starting with pizza, we chose burgers. It wasn’t the dream, but it was the start. We gave T’s Your Palate our full heart and full effort. T’s became our first child, teaching us patience, teamwork, and what it really means to grow something from zero.

Financially, it was not easy. For almost one and a half years, the business was not profitable. Not even close. I used my personal savings and even sold my shares just to keep things going. Our initial investment was around six lakh, and in the beginning, our daily target was just 20,000 rupees. That number might sound small, but when you're building something from scratch, even hitting that target felt like a win.

Slowly, things started to shift. Word spread. Orders grew. And when we finally started making a profit, we didn't celebrate by spending it. We reinvested every rupee back into the restaurant — better equipment, better systems, and a better foundation for what was to come.

Finding a location for Sicily took nearly one year. We walked through so many spaces, rejected so many options, and kept searching until we found the one that felt right. Once we did, renovation alone took another three months. There were many moments during that time when doubt crept in. Yes, I was scared. Starting something new always brings fear — the kind that sits in your chest and whispers, "What if this doesn't work?" But I trusted my team. Each person brought their own strength to the table, and together, we were stronger than any one of us alone.

The most difficult moment came on a busy evening when our head chef left suddenly. Both of our chef partners were on leave. There was no time to panic, no time to call someone in. We had to manage with what we had, right then, right there. That night taught me something I hadn't fully understood before: restaurants are not just about food. They are about people stepping up when things go wrong. And that night, we stepped up.

Today, when I look back at this journey, I don't see one big, dramatic leap. I see many small steps — five orders a day, long searches for the right location, missed chances, slow progress, and mornings where I wasn't sure if it was all worth it. But it was. Every single step was worth it.

From a bank desk to a dining table, this journey was never smooth. But it was real. And it was built with patience, teamwork, and a lot of belief in something that started as nothing more than a quiet thought outside a café.