McDonald’s meets vada pav, Sena loving it

The Shiv Sena is planning to organise a ‘vada pav’ sammelan in Mumbai in September. The party, which has already...

The Shiv Sena is planning to organise a ‘vada pav’ sammelan in Mumbai in September. The party, which has already announced plans to market the snack under the brand name ‘Shiv Vada Pav’ with an aim to strengthen its organisational network and provide livelihood to its cadres, has also managed to rope in fastfood major McDonald’s to sponsor the programme.

Sanjay Gurav, who heads the Sena-affiliated Maharashtra Vada Pav Vikreta Sena, said food connoisseurs will be invited to the sammelan to taste the snack prepared by around 50 vendors. “These people will then rate the snack and help us zero in on the taste which will be standardised through out the chain that will sell vada pav,” he said.

Once the exercise is completed, the party plans to launch vada pav centres across the city by October. “Work on the stalls and the uniform is on. We just need to take necessary permissions from the BMC,” said Gurav. The network would be expanded across Maharashtra later.

A report on the front page of the Sunday edition of the Sena mouthpiece Saamna said party executive president Uddhav Thackeray, who wants vada pav to be an “international brand”, met McDonald’s India JV partner Amit Jatiya, who in turn has agreed to participate in the Shiv Vada Pav scheme.

While adding that the tie-up with the fastfood chain would give international recognition and a corporate look to the vada pav centres, Gurav said that the party has started registering vada pav sellers for the scheme at the party headquarters.

A self-help group, to ensure that the vada pav vendors save and invest money at the end of the day, is also on the cards. Sena Rajya Sabha MP and Saamna executive editor Sanjay Raut, who is also supervising the exercise, had organised a vada pav party in New Delhi recently.