Ride for your dinner
After more than 12 years in the retail industry, the sales mix wanted a change. After coming home to Delhi from Aurangabad in Maharashtra, he decided to venture into the food business and open a cafe with a beer and wine license, avoiding the fact that the liquor license is too expensive. “I realized that with the six-month deposit required by restaurant landlords, I could start my own business,” he says. With a few friends, Misra launched “India’s first GPS-enabled food truck” exactly in Gurgaon. Karan Malik, who runs Super Soccer (“Our healthy food sucks the toxins out of your system”), a Delhi-based food truck was influenced by the same idea. “Brick-and-mortar restaurant spaces are very expensive. I thought it would be better to focus on mobile consumers, giving them an alternative to roadside Thelas, ”said Malik.
Eggjactly and Super Suckers are among a growing carpool of vendors that offer consumers the option of eating healthily prepared sidewalks to get around. If Exactly Waffles, Burgers and Shake formats garner a huge bunch of social media (NS?), Super Soccer’s Healthy Smoothies and Tortilla Wraps are no exception. And if you think it’s just a beginner’s playground, think again. The Lalit Food Tak Company, run by the luxury chain The Lalit Hotel, is marking milestones with its Mexican Grab truck, which is making pit stops across South and Central Delhi.
Eggjactly, at the moment, either serves breakfast and dinner or serves lunch and dinner, although there are plans to start eating three meals soon. Similarly, Super Sakar, currently located outside East Delhi, is scouting for locations in Gurgaon. The target audience is UP dinners, as well as college students, although most owners agree that this is a mixed bag that comes with it. Prices are very competitive, food for one will bring you back anywhere from 80 to 240 rupees.
Not that food trucks by any means in the city is a new concept, even in their current layout. Roadside vans, usually in matte shades of orange and black, serving Delhi-Chinese or chaat and all its forms, have become a ubiquitous sight for commuters in the capital for decades. It all started in the spring. “My father, Anil, probably launched Delhi’s first food truck in 1976, driving a converted Dodge car,” said Abhinav Narula, whose family-owned Hawkers Indo-Chinese food truck company is an integral part of Delhi’s food environment. He says it’s about seven to eight years ago that civic authorities really started creating problems for vendors. “MCD and other agencies think that food trucks will bring traffic problems and other nuisances. Many people are not aware of the concept, there are no policies or regulations to deal with the format exclusively, which makes it difficult to manage, especially in Delhi. In that sense, Gurgaon and Noida are easy to navigate, ”said Malik.
For Eggjactly, the next step is an online delivery service and three more trucks in the next three months, in addition to an Android app. “Since our trucks will be GPS-enabled, you can track the one closest to you using the app whenever you’re hungry,” Misra said. So go ahead, ride for your dinner.
