Buy snacks on king long buses

Imagine being in an air-conditioned BEST bus, and buying a bag of chips and an energy drink – on the bus.

Imagine being in an air-conditioned BEST bus, and buying a bag of chips and an energy drink – on the bus.

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The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) has got a proposal from a private contractor for ‘In-vehicle retailing’, involving the installation of a mini-stall inside its air-conditioned buses. The stall will stock wafers, snacks, health and energy drinks and mineral water.

Newspapers and cellphone chargers will also be available. “Many people don’t get time to read the papers in the morning or forget to recharge their cellphones,” said a BEST official.

The stall will either be in the form of a vending machine, or a sales executive operating it. The executive will handle restocking the stall and selling the stock on a daily basis.

BEST has 270 such air-conditioned buses, including the purple King Long and red Tata buses – all of which could be part of this proposal. BEST officials say they will initially promote the concept for long-distance routes, which have lower commuter load.

BEST expects to earn around Rs 11.34 lakh as revenue, with the contractor promising to pay Rs 350 per bus a month with an increase of 10 per cent per annum. The proposal has not yet come to the BEST Committee for approval.

“We have received this proposal just a week ago, but it is yet to be discussed. If it is successful inside our air-conditioned buses, we might extend the concept to normal buses as well,” said BEST Chairman, Dilip Patel.