Monsoon showers home delivery option

Monsoon comes with its set of woes, but seems to be raining business opportunities on some. Organised food chains such as Dominos and US Pizza see increased revenue from home delivery with consumers preferring to eat in the comfort of their home.

Jumbo King, the organised chain selling vada-pavs, has also started test marketing the home delivery model.

Currently, only three of its 35 outlets in Mumbai offer home delivery.

Speaking to HT, Dev Amritesh, vice-president, marketing, Dominos Pizza, said, “The bulk of our business, about 65 per cent, comes from the home delivery model. And in the three monsoon months, it goes up by 15 per cent.” Mumbai, with fierce rains sees the biggest impact although other places, too, observe a surge.

To meet rising demand for home delivery during monsoon, part-timers are added to the workforce as well. There is a 5 per cent increase in the workforce, said Dev. Dominos has 195 stores across 24 cities and has over 4,000 personnel ensuring prompt home delivery. Its turnover is expected to be over Rs 300 crore this year.

He added that hectic work schedules and paucity of time in metros boost the home delivery business, as more people prefer to spend quality time at home.

Akbar Khan, managing director of US Pizza said, “In places such as Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai, there is a definite rise in home delivery orders in monsoon. However, in tier 2 cities such as Gujrat, Navsari, Wapi, Valsad etc, people prefer to battle the rains to eat out.”

US Pizza, which has 62 stores across 27 cities, clocked Rs 24 crore in revenue last year, 60 per cent of which was from home delivery mode. “It goes up to 70 per cent during monsoon,” Khan said.

However, for bigger formats such as Food Bazaar, home delivery is not a viable option. Sadashiv Nayak, CEO of Food Bazaar said, “We want our customers to come and spend time at out outlets and we provide home delivery minimally, as a service. There is hardly any commercial viability in it for us.” He argued that home delivery would suit the local grocery purchase transactions better.