Hyderabad: Corona begins to eat into roadside eateries' business

Hyderabad: While the overall business outlets in the city are being affected due to the outbreak of coronavirus, the business of the bandiwallas (roadside eateries) in the city has also been affected due to the coronavirus.

When The Hans India spoke to Ramana on Wednesday, he said that "Joh Khanaewaalehai woh to aayenge hi Na madam" by which he meant regular customers would anyway come. He, however, said, "there has been a slight decrease of around 10% in these past few days. Earlier, when people used to come to have tiffins, we would give the food in plates. Now we are providing food in paper plates and also giving tissue papers."

Durgamma, who has been running a small meal center under a shed near the Safilguda Lake for the past 8 months, was seen waiting for her regular visitors at her stall. She said, "Every day at least 40-50 people used to come to this stall and have meals during the lunch hours. Now, the business has dropped to around 30 people coming and eating on a single day. Now the food is being to the customers in paper plates."

While many roadside eateries were seen providing the food in paper plates, there were still some eateries at the Picket road in Secunderabad seen giving the foods on the regular plates.

Raghu of HKN Chinese, Picket road, said, "The business has seen a downfall of around 30% in the past few days. There was a time when there used to be a huge rush of people visiting our eatery." Talking about the precautionary measures, he further adds saying, "We wash the plates twice and then give the foods to the customers. If we provide paper plates, there are few customers who ask to give their orders in proper plates."

Once there were dozens of IT employees visiting these road side eateries for their breakfast in Karkhana towards Secunderabad, now they see only a few customers. Swami, who runs his eatery in a small mini truck near Trimulgherry crossroads, said, "There has been a decrease of 30% of sales as now the IT employees have stopped coming. Earlier, they used to daily visit and had their breakfast."

"There has been a downfall of 40% of the customers visiting our tiffin center as most of them were the IT employees. Now, customers come till 9:30 0r 10 in the morning. Before the customers would visit the center till 11:30, mostly on weekends," said Lakshman of Mayur Tiffins in Karkhana.