Food in a Tinderbox

The restaurant industry is close to irreparable damage. Can it be saved?

- MANU KAUSHIK

Gurugram-based restaurateur Zorawar Kalra, Founder and MD of Massive Restaurants, is surprised. In the five tranches of the economic stimulus package released by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the ₹4-lakh crore restaurant industry didn’t even find a mention. Kalra claims that the industry is the second-largest employment generator in the country after agriculture, and feels that it should have been given some stimulus. Yet, he remains hopeful, primarily because he thinks that the industry is important, and will not be ignored by the government.

“In London, where I am operating an outlet, the government has paid 80 per cent staff salaries. In Canada, the government and landowners are paying 75 per cent of real estate rentals. The government has addressed the concerns of the agriculture sector well, and as a result, I still believe that something is around the corner,” he says.

The stimulus, whenever it is announced, would not have come a day too soon. Rahul Singh, Founder and CEO of seven-year-old alco-beverage chain, The Beer Café, has the numbers on his fingertips; how much he is losing every day and losses the industry will have to incur in the current financial year. Singh had learnt the business hard way, after failing in his indoor golf venture some years ago, where he realised the importance of the restaurant business. Singh says it’s now back to square one for him.

Dineout, a dining out and online table reservation tech platform, says the F&B (food and beverage) industry contributes about 3 per cent to the GDP and employs more than 7.3 million people. With the coronavirus pandemic, nearly 30 per cent of those employed are at the risk of losing jobs; the monetary loss could be as high as ₹1 lakh crore.