The Times of India              26.11.2010

Roadside food vendors clean up their act

GURGAON: The roadside vendors of Gurgaon are taking the road less travelled. With hopes of licensing procedures being put in place for the food and beverage market, the vendors in almost 15 industrial localities of Gurgaon are offering fresh and hygienically packaged food.

I have a food stall in Udyog Vihar, outside the IBM office, and since Ive started selling packed food my sales have almost doubled from Rs 4,000 to Rs 9,000 approximately. People recommend my food to their friends and being amid large corporates, the sale figures are on a constant rise, said Vikram Swami, who is originally from Rajasthan but has been a vendor in Gurgaon for over five years.

The roadside vendors have an edge over the corporate canteens in two ways. Their food is prepared in smaller quantities without any use of preservatives and therefore its closer to home-cooked food, and secondly, it is priced very reasonably.

The canteen food in offices is oily and spicy. The vendors are doing a much better job, said Avinash Sirohi, who works in Udyog Vihar.

It saves me more than an hour in the morning if my husband and I eat lunch from the vendors. And the packaging is excellent so we are assured that its safe to eat, said Sonali Mukherjee, another corporate
executive.

The food sold in the roadside stalls is largely outsourced, so from the time the food is prepared till its sold to the customers, the hygiene factor is well taken care of. According to Nitin Agarwal, proprietor of Chakh le India, a catering company that prepares packaged food sold by vendors in the market, Theres immense scope in the roadside food market in Gurgaon because the kind of food options available with the working crowd is very limited, and most of it is priced higher than its worth. Considering the huge consumer base available in Gurgaon, the concept of organizing roadside market is going to be big hit.

With an elaborate menu for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, vendors in Gurgaon are selling everything from idlis, to rajma chawal, and samosas. The food reaches us at 10 in the morning and we usually get the stock according to our daily demand. So on most days we end up selling all the packets by three in the evening, said Vishnu, a vendor, who has his stall outside the Airtel building. Earlier it was only the lemon soda that sold, but now I sell more food packets than ever, and our clientele includes a lot of corporate workers, as opposed to manual laborers and rickshaw pullers who ate at my stall earlier, added Vishnu.