Changing With The Times

CHITALE BANDHU, one of the biggest and most popular sweetmeat retail outlets in the city, has changed its store timings, keeping it open for 12 hours a day. Citadel finds out what made the Chitales scrap the 1 to 4 pm break, and how they manage to maintain their exemplary quality of foodstu s with this new change.

- Juili Eklahare

We sometimes come across some news, which when heard for the first time, are too hard to believe at first. But that’s bound to happen when something trusted to be impossible the whole time, actually does happen. The people of Pune experienced something similar when there was word that Pune’s biggest and most legendary sweetmeat manufacturer, Chitale Bandhu, will now have its shutters up 12 hours straight, and will be discontinuing it’s so well-known 1 to 4 pm mid-day siesta.

Besides their divine bakarwadi, Chitale Bandhu is reputed, or should we say infamous (pun intended), to have its shutters brought down during its afternoon break, starting at 1 pm, only to go up for its customers at 4 pm again. And there was no way to get their lip-smacking snacks during those three hours. It has been a Puneri tradition, a routine that Punekars have been so used to. And now with the revised timings, it is quite a big deal for us Puneites. Why, you surely must have read the SMS joke where Rajnikanth tries to make his way into the shop at 3 pm and gets thrown out. But not anymore!

Starting this month, three Chitale Bandhu retail outlets in Pune, the ones at Sahakar Nagar, Chandani Chowk and Deccan Gymkhana, have been open from 8.30 am to 8.30 pm, what previously used to be 8 am to 1 pm, a three hour stop at business, and back to work at 4 pm to 8.30 pm.