World Cup offers go for the goal in Delhi
What’s the greatest show on earth? For football fans, it’s the FIFA World Cup, for which excitement starts rising months in advance. And now that we’re just hours away from kick-off — at 8.30pm IST on June 14 — restaurants in Gurugram and other places in Delhi NCR are rolling out offers to score some goals themselves.
At Amuse House, director Tushar Kapoor says, “Apart from live-screening the matches, we’ll have 3D mapping of the FIFA logo, football tables, and a goal post for customers to play while watching the matches.”
A recent article by HT City reported that a decline in IPL viewership had led to a decline in IPL deals offered by restaurants. This made us ask whether this would be the case with football, too? “I don’t think this will be the case with the World Cup, as it happens once every four years. Also, just because India hasn’t established itself as a footballing nation yet, it doesn’t mean the fan base is not there; it’s big and growing even bigger,” says Tushar Jagota and Chetan Kaushal, owners at Karma Kismet, adding, “We’re offering a deal where we’ll ask a customer to select the team they’re supporting. Then we give them a free cocktail/ mocktail based on their country of choice. If the selected team wins, we’ll give them a 15% discount on the total bill.”
Restaurants that don’t have big screens for live-screening are offering free WiFi to customers. “We want our customers to enjoy the happy hours while watching the matches. So, we’ll be offering free WiFi,” says Pankaj Mendiratta, owner at Tama Brewery & World Kitchen.
Since this year’s World Cup host country is Russia, some restaurants are planning a curated Russian menu and vodka-based food pairings. “We’ll be making some crazy combos around vodka and food. We’re also working on a football platter that’ll bring much innovation to ballshaped food,” says Piyush Jain, owner at Decode.