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Chefs will have to wait their turn in longer delivery cycles as suppliers try to hold their cost down by combining multiple deliveries on a route. The other challenge for a supplier is to maintain a stock, and keep the supply chain moving.
For Dalal, it is a hurdle he crosses pretty much on a regular basis. To make up for any shortages, he always offers a choice of products that can be substituted in place of the regular meat or seafood.
But how do restaurants work their menus around this? “We create ‘chef specials’ to counter this”, says Fernandes. An integrated supply chain that includes on-farm pre-processing, and cold chain logistics such as storage facilities, refrigerated transportation, cold storages for multi-product usage, and modern refrigerated storage at the retail level, is the need of the hour.
Says Rodrigues: “This sector is largely dominated by local players. Except for a few customers, most cold chain customers look solely at the price without paying much heed to complete cold chain integrity.” According to him, the requirements are transportation, storage, handling, food safety, and security.
Jaydeep Mukherjee, chef at the Indigo Delicatessen, reiterates this sentiment, but with hope for peers such as Ivan Rodrigues and organisations like his: “There are many fly-by-night suppliers that approach us regularly.
I prefer dealing with those with in-depth knowledge about the product they are supplying, straight from the butcher’s shop.” Having classified this sector as high priority, the Indian government says it is developing concrete plans to attract heavy investments from domestic as well as international players.
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In fact, according to the same FICCI-Technopak report, refrigerated warehouses for perishable cargo will be set up near the international airports at Kochi, Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad.
Currently, these airports do have cold storage facilities, but are not large enough or product friendly. Furthermore, the country’s largest logistics network, the Indian Railways, is inviting private parties to run refrigerated container trains.
If these facilities do see the light of day, then importers and suppliers such as Fortune Gourmet Specialities and Sodexho Radhakrishna Foodland should be able to walk the talk.
The immense opportunity of the QSR format is compelling the frozen food and the cold chain segments to invest in their infrastructure. Franchise is the lead driver of the QSR explosion.
Another FICCI report, along with CIFTI, and Franchise India Holdings, picks out F&B franchising for its expected growth rate of 48% over 24 months, while Euromonitor International, in its report on consumer foodservice in India, pegs the volume of the middle class, our strong economy, and the sheer convenience and cost benefit of the QSR, as key growth drivers.
The report also gives a reason to cheer for restaurants in medium towns of India, which have generally been off the cold chain map.
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