Home delivery by sweet shops, restaurants gets off to a slow start

LUDHIANA : Forty eight days after restaurants and other food joints were closed in the city amid the coronavirus lockdown on March 22, home delivery of cooked food got off to a slow start on Saturday.

Relieved over the green nod given by the district administration, the restauranteurs are, however, expecting a positive response from the residents from coming Monday.

On the first day, owners of many restaurants faced problems in arranging raw material such as dairy items and others only took up cleanliness drives in their respective properties. Some restaurant owners said they would now be able to retain the labour that was moving back to their home states.

“Only 10% response was witnessed on the first day of operations on Saturday as the public was confused over how and through which mode the deliveries would be done. It would have been better if the administration had continued the selected permissions that were granted in the second week of April, but those guidelines were unfortunately cancelled.,” said Bhupinder Basant, owner of Basant Restaurants located near Fountain Chowk and Feroze Gandhi Market.

Sweet shops (halwai shops) also witnessed a similar response on the first day. “Something is better than nothing,” said Narinderpal Singh Pappu, president of halwai association, Punjab.