Hyderabad: Food stalls reel under bitter blow by Covid

Hyderabad: There was a time when denizens savoured a variety of dishes at roadside eateries round-the-clock in several parts of city. However, the Covid pandemic has had an adverse effect on these eateries. Their business is yet to pick up even after the authorities eased down lockdown restrictions.

There is drastic fall in footfalls at food stalls despite providing a variety of dishes including South Indian dosa, idly, wada, pani puri, maggie, shawarma, fast food, bread omelette etc, which used to sell at bandis and food trucks. Most of these points in city have reopened their business in mid-August but still these eateries are struggling to sustain their business.

According to owners of these eateries, earlier, they used to run their business round the clock, but now after easing lockdown restrictions the customers are avoiding visiting eateries. "People are afraid of getting infected with coronavirus and assume that we are not maintaining proper hygiene, but we are following proper sanitization and cleanliness and even using disposals for food," said, a street food vendor at Charminar, who don't want to be named.

He said that he used to start his business midnight and ran till morning, and hundreds of customers used to savour different types of dosas, but this pandemic has affected the business of all the street food stalls badly," he noted.

Apart from Old City, the eateries in Begum Bazar, Mallepally, Tolichowki and in IT corridor are also bearing the brunt of pandemic.

Shaker, an owner of Mohammedia food truck, said, "After lockdown restrictions were relaxed, everyone thought normalcy would return but it is far from it. The people who used to eat at his stall are now avoiding. Earlier he used to sell more than 50 shawarma dishes, now hardly 25-30 dishes are sold. Our earnings have dropped by 80 per cent. It has become difficult for us to buy even essentials for preparing food." He said that people avoided eating outside and due to this several hotels reduced their menu and are selling only biryanis. Most of them had also shut their business. Every food business has been severely affected, he added.