We felt the LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) shortage around five days ago.
There was a supply gap from our suppliers, due to which we had to shut down for about two hours in the middle of the day. I run 17 restaurants across India. In Mumbai, we have Raasta, a Caribbean lounge, and Yeti: The Himalayan Kitchen. Raasta sees around 250-300 people a day, and Yeti around 130.
Since the shutting of the Strait of Hormuz, all my attention has shifted to finding alternative ways to getting dishes out without a considerable lag.
‘Inductions, Ovens & An Increase in Prep Time’
With the shortage of LPG, the obvious solution was to purchase more induction cookers. But using inductions is not the same as LPG. It's not about an uptick in electricity bills; the main issue is the time it takes to prepare a dish on an induction.
Now, every time we take an order, our staff has to inform the guest, "Sir/Ma'am, we are cooking on induction today, so your food might take 5 to 7 minutes longer than usual."
We’ve also had to shorten our menu. We’ve removed several tandoor items which require prolonged use of gas. While we’ve shifted some dishes to the oven, there are certain dishes an oven just can’t replicate. Those items have been made "unavailable" for the moment.
It’s a Catch-22 situation. For a small 2,000 sq ft restaurant like Cafe Loco, which we just opened in Delhi, we need two inductions. But for a place like Yeti, we need 25-30.
'Will Never Resort to Black Market'
Whenever we see crises like this, the black market benefits. We saw it during COVID-19 as well when people were purchasing vaccines and other things from the black market. The same is happening now with cylinders as well. As difficult as things may get, I've refused to resort to those measures. I don't even want to know what these people are charging because I prefer to stick to the correct means.
I'm also actively involved with the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI). We as a body have been making several requests to the state and central government to assist us during this crisis.
We are optimistic given that some ships were allowed to pass through the Strait of Hormuz recently. On top of that, the Honourable Petroleum Minister also said that regular supply will prevail and there won't be any shortage. That might be for residential LPG supply for starters, but we expect that commercial gas supply to be back to normal in 1-2 days' time.
‘Reduction in Footfall‘
Over the last few days, there has also been confusion among people regarding whether we are open. But the thing is, people are tech-savvy and so are our social media teams. We've been actively putting out posts on Instagram et al on the hours of our functioning.
But yes, I will say that around 2-3 percent of our footfall has reduced, especially when it comes to groups making impromptu plans. People have started checking in more rather than just walking in. When it comes to larger groups of people, they think, "Abhi kaun check karega?" (Who will bother checking?) and then avoid coming to the restaurant altogether. That's one opportunity lost.
I'm yet to go through weekly reports of our orders via Swiggy and Zomato, but my feeling is that there may have been a fall in our orders that are delivered far, like 5-7 km away.
Right now, the only two things we can resort to are fastening the process of our transition to PNG (piped natural gas) connections, which haven't been affected so far, and shortening our menu. We'll also think of alternative ways of cooking and getting people to come to our restaurants.
One thing I'd like to make clear is, no matter what difficulties we may face, we won't cut our staff. We as an industry don't believe in saving up on costs by adversely impacting livelihoods. If the induction costs turn out to be far higher in the long term, we may resort to a price revision in our menu. But if the difference is negligible, we will absorb the costs for the sake of customer satisfaction.
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