KOLKATA: I deliver food in
Salt Lake
and
New Town
areas but over the past one week the sales have dipped quite a bit.
Last year the situation was not as tense as this. The second wave has really made people retreat into their shells and they are avoiding outside food.
Added to this is the fact that thousands of offices in this area, both government and private, have also shut temporarily. They made up for a large client base. We would get orders throughout the day but now we are depending only on orders that are coming from private residences.
There is more than 30 per cent drop in business suddenly. We hope that business picks up once the restrictions are lifted. We are hearing that the curve is coming down and I pray to god that this becomes true.
For people like us, the situation is very scary. We risk our lives and continue to keep the
delivery chain
alive because our livelihood depends on this. But if business dries up like this, where will we go?
Towards the evening some orders flow in but they are small orders for snacks. The big lunch and dinner orders are not showing up. Most eateries are offering good discounts to attract customers and are also publicising on
social media
.
We are also scared of the cyclone
Yaas that is coming next week. We don’t know what impact it will leave for us in its trail and for how many days we have to deal with it.
Normally after a disaster strikes, people think of survival first and not about ordering food from a restaurant. All delivery boys are praying that the cyclone does not leave the city devastated in the same way
Amphan
did last year. It will then take a longer while for us to come back on track.
(Rajdeep Bar, a delivery boy, spoke to Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey)