On The Menu: Lockdown

Covid-19 has spelt disaster for the F&B industry—already running on wafer-thin margins—prompting experts to relook at high-risk business models as fears of some restaurants shutting down loom large

- Kathakali Chanda & Pankti Mehta Kadakia

Anurag Katriar, executive director and CEO of deGustibus Hospitality, remembers March 11, the day after Holi, rather well. That day Mumbai recorded its first Covid-19 case and his restaurants—Indigo Deli, Indigo Burger Project, Neel, D:OH, among others—began to see a dip in footfall. By the time Katriar, also president of the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), which represents 500,000-plus F&B outlets, sent an advisory to its members on March 17, asking them to down shutters, his business had fallen by over 50 percent. “I had thought Covid-19 wouldn’t impact India the way it has. I made a mistake,” says Katriar, who owns 13 brick-and-mortar outlets, 11 delivery kitchens and a catering arm.

Holi 2020 has been a watershed moment for several other big guns of the F&B industry too. Impresario Handmade Restaurants, which has in its stable hangouts like Social and Smokehouse Deli, lost 20 percent of its clients after the festival and 40 percent by the weekend that followed. For the Olive Group, the umbrella company for restaurants like Olive Bar and Kitchen, Monkey Bar, The Fatty Bao, SodaBottleOpenerWala, the loss of business began with tour groups, parties and group bookings being cancelled. When the outbreak reached India, it also stopped bar nights of all kinds: That hurt the balance sheets big time, says AD Singh, chairman. Then, as individual states announced lockdowns and eventually the national was declared on March 25, all of Olive Group’s 37 restaurants and delivery kitchens across eight brands and six cities shut down.

“It will take many months after the end of the pandemic for businesses to return to pre-Covid-19 levels.”

RAHUL AKERKAR,

FOUNDER AND MANAGING PARTNER, QUALIA HOSPITALITY