Melt 'N' Mellow

Melt 'N' Mellow is setting up a dessert store on Apte Road in Pune, located between JM Road and Fergusson College Road, as the anchor for a wider city rollout.

The company intends to follow this single location with 15 additional Pune stores run under a franchise arrangement, though none of those sites have opened yet.

The Apte Road location covers close to 1,400 square feet of usable space. Company leaders said the site was finalized by the end of September and was being readied for opening, with a launch anticipated within the same month as the update, though no exact calendar date was given.

Executives noted that the company's own costs under this setup would mainly be product supply and store staff wages, though they gave no figures for expected sales, how long it would take a store to turn profitable, or earnings per location. They did say that stores selling directly to consumers typically bring in roughly twice the profit margin compared with regular wholesale-style sales, without specifying the actual percentage.

By keeping operational control in-house rather than handing it to franchisees, Melt 'N' Mellow is betting it can protect brand consistency while still spreading out the costly parts of running physical stores — rent and utilities — onto local partners.

The company also plans to lean on an existing workforce of more than 200 people already handling distribution across six states, suggesting store staffing needs may not add a large new cost layer separate from its current operations.

This store push sits alongside strong recent growth in the company's broader ice-cream business: sales reached close to Rs 74 crore in the first half of the year, about three times what they were a year earlier, with management anticipating that pace of expansion to roughly double the 20% to 25% growth pace projected for its nuts business over the coming two to three quarters.

The company's near-term milestone is simply getting the Apte Road store open; the 15 planned franchise locations are not expected to begin until after that hub is operating.

Management mentioned Navi Mumbai and Hyderabad as cities it might consider entering later, but made no commitments on timing, store sites, or investment needed, saying only that Pune comes first.

Separately, leadership indicated it does not expect major expansion beyond its core markets — Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, which together are expected to supply about 80% to 85% of ice-cream sales — until that business segment's revenue climbs to Rs 600 crore.