Guwahati Foodie, one of the largest food related communities of Northeast India conducted a survey few days back to check the preferences of people to eat outside food or not. The results of the survey was rather disheartening for the eatery owners of the region.
Guwahati is the largest city of Northeast India with a population of around 12 lakhs. It also has the highest number of eateries of different categories in the region. These range from micro scale gumties serving simple thalis to sophisticated multi cuisine restaurants.
Because of the high volume of orders of different quantities, a large number of cloud kitchens are also active. This city is also a hub for the services of the food aggregators like Swiggy and Zomato. The eat out culture was at its peak during the pre-covid era with thousands of people dining in restaurants and thousands more ordering food.
But the recent Covid-19 pandemic had put a brake on all these businesses since the month of March. Eateries, agrigators and their allied sectors are among the worst hit by the virus. Customers are finding it very difficult to put trust on restaurants. Due to the fear of infection, the number of people willing to eat out or order from restaurants is very small.
Sisir Kumar, an admin of this community commented “the first few days will see very high ordering and eating out because people missed the outside food for such a long time. The owners need to be cautious for atleast two to three weeks to get a hang of the new scenario. “
Options given in the eat out survey.
The following options were given for the poll and people were asked to select only one of the options.
- Dine – in in your favorite eatery.
- Order via food agrigators
- Only home cooked food.
A huge majority of the voters comprising of nearly 60%, chose the home cooked food option. Meaning that the majority was not ready to eat outside food just yet. The second favorite option was dine in while food delivery was the least favorite among the options.
Even though proper precautions are being taken by eaters and delivery partners, consumers are still a bit sceptic about the eat out option as revealed by this survey.
