Iconic eateries of Mumbai in breakdown mode

Restaurant body, AHAR, pegs revenue losses to the tune of more than fifty percent

The current lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted all small and medium restaurants in the city. There are over 8000 eateries registered with the restaurateur’s body AHAR and those bearing the maximum brunt are the ones who have to take care of their large workforce. Furthermore, overheads and sustained skilled worker salaries add to the woes of the eatery owners in their fight for survival, says Geeta Hansaria.

Among those impacted is also one of the Mumbai’s most renowned Quick Service Restaurant - Achija established in 1987 in Ghatkopar, Pant-Nagar famous for its scrumptious Pav-Bhaji & Fast-Food.

“We are a chain of vegetarian restaurants and have been serving quality fast-food since 1987. There are always ups and down in business but never in the last three decades have we seen such staggering disruption. The turmoil in the Food & Beverage sector is so severe that, it will easily take over a year for things to crawl back to normal,” explains Tapan Mange, Restaurateur-Promoter, Achija.

Other restaurant owners have concerns similar to those expressed by Mr. Mange. Due to real estate being expensive in Mumbai, small eating joints have always had modest space to accommodate their customers. “We used to try and sqeeze six people in a table that could comfortably accommodate four, during peak hours due to space crunch. Currently due to social-distancing norms, that the government has laid out for everyone’s safety during the pandemic, we are not able to do this. Due to the lockdown the footfalls have reduced drasticaly, however, the overheads, salaries and maintenance costs still have to be borne by us. This impact may force us to hike our selling price,” says the owner of Hotel Manohar, another long-standing eatery in Dadar.

AHAR, the unified body representing restaurateurs quotes from a recent CRISIL report that the F&B industry in the country is worth 1.5 lakh crores and it will take another year for it to recover. Dine ins account for 75% of the revenue while deliveries and takeaways account for the rest 25 %. The turnover of each restaurant has experienced an estimated revenue loss of 55 - 60% in this period. Cities like Mumbai and Delhi, where the toll of the pandemic has been worse, in themselves account for half of the organized hotel industry and the impact seen there is maximum.

“Ours is a perishable goods industry. Our migrant manpower has left us, we still have overheads and rentals to tackle in spite of business being down to almost a trickle. Even in the near future people would prefer calling in food at home, as in most of our small restaurants due to crunched spaces, strict social distancing is difficult to follow and hence we have to rely only on take-outs & parcels. However, even today we are bound to pay our overheads at the commercial rate,” says Mr. Niranjan Shetty, Member, AHAR. After the lockdown, the F&B Industry hopes the Maharashtra State Government will consider problems of the sector afresh.