Food retailers choke, but home deliverers cheer

While no one’s able to point out the exact impact on sales, industry players say the sales are affected to an extent of at least 5 to 10 per cent. Says the US fast food chain Subway’s India head Manpreet Gulri: “March-April is generally a tight period in terms of sales in the food retail business. The impact, my guesstimate would be, five per cent approximately.”

Agrees coffee retail chain Barista Coffee Company’s marketing and strategy head Brotin Banerjee: “Yes, sales are affected on an overall basis in the F&B retail industry and Barista does fall in that bracket.”

The reasons why traffic to these food outlets slows down during the lean season is not difficult to fathom. First, for most food majors, a high percentage of its customer base is teenagers who are busy with board exams during this time of the year.

Secondly, cricket—and more so, if it’s a India-Pak series—confines a large customer base of these outlets to home/office. “Cricket and exams have a higher impact on footfalls. Elections do not affect footfalls to as great an extent. This is generally the trend that we have noticed over the last two years. For example, the footfalls were very low during the World Cup last year,” says Subway’s Gulri.

There are some players, however, who like to differ. Take Yum! Restaurants International, the parent company of Pizza Hut, for instance. While admitting March-April is a lean period, Yum Restaurants International director marketing Indian subcontinent Pankaj Batra claims that they have managed to beat norms by launching unique promotions.

“For example in 2003, in addition to exam season slack there was the World Cup in the March-April period. At this point we launched the Tandoori range of pizzas and intelligent marketing initiatives like the Pooch World Cup blast, and clocked a 20 per cent increase in sales,” claims Batra.

Similarly, Barista, too says Bannerjee “tends to do student-based promotions to increase the off take and negate any disadvantage from loosing out on sales during this lean period.”

On the flip side, though, ‘confining to home/office’ has a spiral effect: delivery sales go up. “During the cricket season and the elections an increase number of consumers like to enjoy great food within the confines of their homes and offices,” says Batra.

Agrees homegrown pizza chain Pizza Corner’s CEO Anoop Sequeira: “March-April are generally tight months, we see a dip in sales. But with day-night cricket matches, we see spikes in delivery sales.”

This year will be no different when it comes to battling the lean season blues.

“Cricket is the national passion and Barista Coffee endorses it, we would be participating in the same by running promotions across India and creating parallel buzz on the cricket fever. We run promotions that hype the event and lend us a further opportunity to cash in on the same,” says Bannerjee.

Pizza Hut, too, has enhanced the in-store experience and also installed televisions at all its restaurants. “A visit to any of our restaurants is bound to bring out the cricket fever in our patrons,” says Batra.

According to Gulri, Subway’s promotions are not directly focused on the cricket or the elections but are being used to increase sales and footfalls at its restaurants.

Subway has launched redeemable coupons targeted at different time periods of the day: there is a coupon for before lunch, mid-day and dinner periods.

“We hope to see a reasonable redemption of these coupons at our outlets since we are giving good deals to our customers.”

How far will the promotions help F&B majors beat the seasonal blues, only time will tell. But if past experience is anything to go by, creating hype on an event does work.