New Delhi: At a time when online food ordering has become the new normal for millennials and working couples, piping hot biryani has come out of the oven in a big way, emerging as the most-loved comfort food across Metros and suburbs in the country.
Like the way pizza and burger orders flourished, online food delivery platforms have now crowned biryani as the king of most-craved dishes.
“Compared to 2017, there was a whopping 681 per cent increase in biryani orders on Swiggy in 2018 – that is one biryani ordered every 3.5 seconds,” the online food delivery platform said. While pizzas, burgers and cakes were the most searched food items last year, chicken biryani remained the most ordered dish during festivals, lunches, dinners, snack time and late-night slots across the country.
According to Sagar Kochhar, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Rebel Foods which is the parent company of Behrouz – India’s largest online biryani brand – biryani consumers have become a lot more extreme in terms of preferences. “They want to indulge in great food experiences and they do not eat just with the purpose of filling their bellies,” Kochhar said. “Biryani has got momentum with the mushrooming of online platforms and with millennials consuming it the most.
Biryani is also region-specific and a Bengali will prefer Kolkata biryani and a Tamilian will go for Chennai-type biryani. We are devising new marketing strategies to attract millennials via Facebook and Instagram, etc,” K. Umamaheswaran, Founder of Kolkata Biryani House which has branches in Delhi-NCR, said.
According to Sandeep Anand, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Zomato, biryani orders have increased more than 10 times on the platform. “Chicken biryani has been the most-ordered dish on our platform for two straight years. The numbers are destined to only grow further with more and more biryani outlets opening-up with interesting innovations to the dish,” Anand noted.