New Delhi: It’s a perfect case of a no-go area becoming a go-go one. With a vastly improved law and order scenario in Bihar after Nitish Kumar’s return to power as the state’s chief minister, food retail chains are queuing up to enter capital city Patna to whet the urban Bihari’s appetite.
While Domino’s Pizza, the first food retailer to enter Patna five months ago is planning to add two more stores, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Barista, Cafe Coffee Day and Subway are finalising plans to open stores in the city.
For these food retailers, there are two specific reasons for including Bihar in their business plans: Better law and order and rising demand for branded food.
“Domino’s Pizza was already a well-recognised brand in Patna because of our dominant presence on national television. Our store in Patna, in fact, holds a record in terms of highest sales when it opened in October last year,†says Dev Amritesh, senior vice-president (marketing) at Jubilant Foodworks, the master franchisee of Domino’s Pizza in India.
For Domino’s, the next step is opening another pizza store in the plush Boring Road area of Patna in the next few months followed by another outlet in the Kankar Bagh area of south-central Patna.
For McDonald’s too, Bihar is on top of its expansion plans for eastern India. “Once our base in Kolkata becomes stronger so as to act as the centre for supplying the logistics to other locations, we will enter Patna among other cities in Jharkhand and Bihar,†Rajesh Kumar Maini, general manager at McDonald’s India told FE.
Pizza Hut, which is present in Varanasi, Bhubaneswar and Guwahati, is expected to enter Patna soon, industry sources said. Delhi-based Chinese fast-food Yo! China is already present in Patna. Coffee chains like Barista and Cafe Coffee Day too are expected to open outlets at the Patna airport, sources said.
Sources also attributed the heightened interest from food retail chains to several market research studies to gauge the eating-out trends in cities like Patna, Ranchi, Bokaro and Muzaffarpur. But why enter Patna now? According to the branded foods industry, in Patna, dining out is more popular than home delivery. Also, the current wallet-share of dining-out is going to home-grown restaurants. “A family of four spends Rs. 500-700 on an average on eating out, which happens 3-4 times in a month. People love Chinese, Indian and continental food and that’s why others are keen to come here,†an executive working for a leading restaurant in Patna said. For the fast food majors, Patna and other cities in Bihar are part of their expansion plans for tier-II and tier-III. “In smaller towns, the advantages are many. People tend to come to the outlet to eat and do not like home-deliveries. Also, the restaurants are in a particular part of a town which can be accessed without taking out the car in most cases. So there are no parking hassles, unlike in metros,†said a senior executive of a leading food brand. But the main challenge for organised food retailers is the lack of quality real estate. “We are dependent on our Kolkata kitchen to supply the logistics. Real estate is an issue in Patna,†said Amritesh.
Even McDonald’s is apprehensive on setting up its central kitchen in Patna. “We will scale our presence in Kolkata from 3 to 10 outlets soon before foraying into Bihar, Assam and other locations in West Bengal. Central kitchen will have to be in Kolkata initially,†Maini said.