Hot and Cold Essay

Since season immemorial, Indians have been bombarded with snacks-to-go by driveway vendors fastfood is neither a modern phenomenon, nor a western innovation. But as increasing numbers of international players enter the domestic help market, there are bitter lessons to learn about what local consumers will and will not welcome. just-food.coms Debasish Ganguly reports from India on the evolving sector and the challenges facing new entrants into the fastfood market.Fastfood is not an alien concept to Indians roadside shops have offered snacks-to-go since time immemorial and the country has a dogged tradition of indigenous fastfood served by a variety of street vendors. Whether the southern Dosas or the Phulkas in the north, the Vada, Samosas or Bhelpuri, this inexpensive cuisine is still going strong, and street marketing is a low-cost method of food distribution.However, since the arrival of established fastfood chains such as McDonalds, marketing savvy and dollar power have give n fastfood a very western orientation. The weekend stampedes orthogonal any McDonalds restaurant are standing testimony to this fact.But the burger behemoths still have a long way to go. Local fastfood is not easily undermined by these interlopers, since methods of mass production have not been meliorate and, in any case, they would have to compete with low cost artisan production. On the other hand, the domain is that established local fastfood chains, like Nirulas, Wimpys or Haldiram, are sensing competition by the growing popularity of McDonalds and other international chains. Though Nirulas does not admit to any drop in sales overtly, patience sources reveal that they have lost 18% of their original market share.So far, the fastfood chains have gained their popularity among the study metropolitan cities of India and some smaller cities, such as Pune or Baroda. Before the arrival of these fastfood chains, Nirulas was the market leaderin Delhi. In fact, Nirulas taught Delhi-d wellers what pizzas and burgers were all about. Nirulas was commanding a monopoly until western chains arrived in India.