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Punekars ring in 2020 with parties, in personal style
They enjoyed the winter chill at restaurants and pubs that were open till 5 am as well as ordering food at home and welcoming the new decade enjoying the view from their terraces
New Year celebrations saw Punekars partying outside, enjoying the winter chill at restaurants and pubs that were open till 5 am as well as ordering food at home and welcoming the new decade enjoying the view from their terraces.
Hrishikesh Joshi and his wife, celebrated with their relatives residence in Padmavati with homemade Pav Bhaji and sweets. However, a lot of families preferred ordering food home with a substantive rise in restaurant deliveries.
Ganesh Shetty, president, Pune Hotels Association said, '' We have received a good number of people for lunch and several others pre-booked their tables with us for dinner. However, there was also a 25 per cent increase in home deliveries this year with people preferring to celebrate at home.''
Jayant Patkar, an HR consultant, this year instead of travelling out of Pune decided to host a house party with 20 of his friends. "My daughter will be appearing for her Class 10 exams in March and hence we could not afford to go out of town this year. Therefore, I decided to have a potluck at my place, where each person was supposed to prepare or order a dish and we shared the food among us bring the new year together.''
A total of 150 restaurants in Koregaon Park were almost full with table reservations. Praful Chandavarkar, owner of Malaka Spice, said,“We had the year’s highest number of reservations for lunch on the last day of 2019 with 800 reservations for the night. Despite this there was a 12 per cent increase in home deliveries to nearby areas.”
While in Baner too, restaurants saw tables get booked swiftly. According to Ashwin Shetty, owner of Mr Rabbits and Burrows, ''Those who prefer to go out pre-booked their tables for the evening, however, we kept openings for walk-ins too. We also had plenty of home deliveries through Swiggy and Zomato, but we are yet to calculate how many numbers.''
“As the food delivery platform of choice in Pune, Swiggy saw a spike in the number of orders this New Year. We have worked with our restaurant and delivery partners over the last couple of weeks to ensure that those Puneites who choose to celebrate the new year in the comfort of their homes have a hassle-free and reliable delivery from the wide variety of restaurants on Swiggy. While we anticipated maximum orders to come in between 8 and 11 pm, consumers also ordered from Swiggy as late as 2-4 am. Keeping in mind this is an occasion celebrated with friends and family, we worked with restaurant partners to curate menus for bulk orders as well,” said an official from Swiggy.
