Mumbai’s beloved street food is getting costlier as LPG price hike pushes vendors to the brink

At Nariman Point, Vishal Gujjan, a chaiwala, said a large part of his earnings now goes into simply keeping his stove running. “It has become harder to make do but still I have not increased the price of a cup of chai.” He added that he has not changed the size of a cup of chai either, despite rising costs. “As long as I can fill my stomach and keep the water running at home, I’m happy.”

Sameem Ahmed (in the black shirt), a worker at a sandwich stall in Nariman Point, says rising LPG costs have led him to have price hikes and a fall in daily customers. (Express Photo)

Gujjan’s concerns are echoed across the city. In Goregaon, Imran Javed, a roadside shawarma stall operator, said that rising costs have altered the local street food landscape. “This road used to have so many stalls, vada pav, bhajjia, sandwiches. In the last month many have had to move, don’t know where they’ve gone.”

Javed continued that he has not increased his prices in spite of the rising costs. “People still come from nearby societies, offices and the metro. It’s not about how many people are coming, the money I make is going down.”

With fuel costs rising, he added that a significant portion of his earnings are spent on keeping the stall going, “Most of my earnings now go into keeping the stove going. Anyway, what can we do?”

This pressure is not just limited to small vendors. In Dadar, Hussein Ali, owner of Dadar Lucky Restaurant & Stores, said he has also refrained from increasing menu prices and still routinely faces near-empty lunch services at his restaurant. However, in spite of this, he remains positive. “These things keep happening, I have a roof over my head and two square meals a day, I’ll be okay.”

He added that the impact is more sharply felt by his employees and other daily wage earners. “Personally, I feel that no business owner is truly affected by the price rises, your margins take a small hit but it is your employees who are really affected by it”, noting that the costs of smaller LPG cylinders used in households has also risen, even as incomes remain uncertain. However, not all vendors have been able to absorb the rising costs. At a sandwich stall in Nariman Point, worker Sameem Ahmed said that prices had to be increased, leading to a drop in customers. “Earlier a sandwich used to cost ₹20 and now it costs ₹30, many aren’t willing to pay.”

Ahmed added that while he is lucky to be located in an area surrounded by offices and that office workers make up a large portion of his customers, the stall has lost an estimated 30% of their customer base in daily workers, “They used to be regulars, now they aren’t willing to pay the raised prices.”

For many vendors, the options are no longer profit or loss, but survival or closure. With no immediate relief in sight from the rising prices of LPG cylinders, small businesses say that soon they may have no choice but to raise prices or scale down their operations, thus reshaping the city’s food economy, previously sustained by availability and affordability.

(Kaizan Kabrajee is an intern with The Indian Express.)