Hyderabad: Business at Metro Rail food joints not on track yet

Secunderabad: The unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown has an all-pervasive devastating impacton the small retailers and also the metro retail shops especially the food joints. After months lockdown, the food joints at metro stations are receiving only 50 to 60 percent of footfall. Keeping in mind of current pandemic situation, L&T Hyderabad Metro Rail is planning to install food dispensing vending machines with zero human contact.

Metro Rail Retail is largely of daily essential items and need based items that include fashion brands, convenience formats, lifestyle brands, mobile and accessories. But due to the Covid lockdown,five per cent of retail shops got shut. Currently, about 50 retail stores are functioning at various metro rail stations.To improve customer experience, officials are in talks with a few app developers to integrate all the metro rail retailers under one roof for easy online ordering. With this, one can just place the order via app online generating a QR code for the near-by vending machine on metro rail stations. Products will be dispensed with a simple scan of the QR code on the vending machine.

On the condition anonymity, a senior officer of L&T Hyderabad Metro Rail said, "After unlock-4.0, Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMR) resumed its services on September 7. Only after five months after resumption, business is picking pace. HMR is witnessing an average daily passenger footfall of about 1.86 lakh, which is close to 50 per cent restoration of pre-Covid footfall. We expect this uptick to be also visible at food joints at the metro station."

"Earlier, especially on the peak hours, we used to witness a huge rush at each and every stall or shop at metro station and at present we are only receiving half of what we used to receive earlier. The reason is that still many people are working from home. Moreover, many people are still avoiding outside food," said Y Raju, a helper at a food joint, Ameerpet Metro station.

"All the safety measures are being taken.We have placed sanitiser bottle, so before placing the order, the customers cleanse their hands.Comparatively we are receiving less customers now,"said, K Pintu,proprietor of a food joint, Metro station, Ameerpet.