Food Service Industry

  INTRODUCTION TO FOOD SERVICE INDUSTRY IN INDIA

 The food service industry engages itself in the provision of food and beverages, mainly to people who are away from their homes for various reasons. Such people need accommodation with food and beverages if they are away for more than a day and only food and beverages if they are away for a short duration of time. 

The basic needs of customers for food and beverages are met by the food service industry, which has been associated with lodging ever since people started travelling. People who move out of their homes for various reasons, such as job, education, business, leisure, medical treatment, sports, religion, and so on, depend completely on the food service industry for their meals.

                     The food and beverage (F&B) industry in India traces its roots to the traditional community feasts and the movement of people on pilgrimage thousands of years ago. Most people were on the move primarily for preaching religion and hunting. During those days, people took shelter under trees when they were away from their homes and depended on natural sources for their food. Their lives were endangered by wild animals and wayside robbers, which forced them to look for a place that assured them safety, accommodation, and food.

 Dharamshalas and chatrams came up to protect the lives of travellers from wild animals and robbers. These were buildings where travellers could stay free of cost. Travellers were also provided with stables and sheds for horses and bullock carts, respectively, free of charge. They were given food and accommodation at no cost during the rule of kings. The barter system of transaction was slowly introduced and it motivated people to travel for trade, mainly of livestock, which later expanded to food grains, clothing, tools, and other goods. 

Traders used to share accommodation with the owner of the house and were given meals and drinks. Mighty regional kings entertained common people and merchants with feasts consisting of a variety of rich dishes, traditional dances, bravery arts, etc., during festivals.

 India has been subject to influxes of people throughout its history, some coming with arms to loot and conquer, others moving in to trade or to settle down. The country was able to absorb the impact of these intrusions because it was able to assimilate and tolerate foreign ideas and people. Outsiders who came to India during the course of its history include the Greeks under Alexander the Great, the Kushānas from Central Asia, the Mongols under Genghis Khan, Muslim traders and invaders from the Middle East and Central Asia, and finally the British and other Europeans. It was during the Mughal rule that sarais were developed to provide accommodation to travellers which were later converted to inns and western style hotels during the British rule. The invasion by other dynasties brought in their cultures and cuisines to the land. 

 Europeans visited the country to trade for the finest cotton textiles as well as spices. Eventually, the British colonized the region. They introduced their cuisines, the skill of making wines and distilled drinks, and eating habits. Table etiquettes and the art of eating with cutlery were learnt. However, even today, people continue to eat with their fingers. In south India, especially in Tamil Nadu, people eat their meals from banana leaves and in the north, from a thali. Economic activities paved the way for development of western—style hotels and restaurants, mainly to cater to the requirements of the British and European traders. 

 The people of India, in general, did not prefer dining out till the early 1960s. They always carried home-made food to the workplace, school, and while travelling. Even today, some people carry food whenever they go out. Perhaps this could be one of the reasons for dabbawalas , who are food vendors engaged in distributing meals in dabbas (boxes) to clients at their workplaces, doing so well in Mumbai. In south India, people used to buy packed food such as lime rice, tamarind rice, and curd rice from food vendors. In the north, bhojanalayas served local dishes, especially roti, sabzi, and salad. Most of the restaurants of the 1960s were not much concerned about food and personal hygiene, or serving food at the right temperature. Limited items were prepared beforehand, displayed in the shelves, and were served till the stock got exhausted.

 Those who reached early got hot food and those who came late would get cold food. The attitude of the restaurateur or mess keeper was ‘take it or leave it’ and people had no option but to have what was being given. This is because in those days they operated the business with limited dishes that were prepared beforehand and they could not afford to have food holding equipment because of the high cost and unavailability of resources. Coal or firewood were used for cooking. Only the higher-end hotels and restaurants had the luxury of cooking with gas. The development of catering in India is mainly attributed to the British, who introduced hotels and restaurants similar to the ones in Europe. 

They also established resorts in hill stations. The rapid development of transportation, especially the railways in the mid-nineteenth century, enabled people to move in large numbers. This led to the establishment of small lodges and restaurants in and around railway stations to cater to the needs of the travellers. Refreshment rooms at railway stations and pantry cars in some of the trains were introduced. Reputed hotels such as the Taj, the Oberoi, and the Ambassador were well established when India became independent. After Independence, the hospitality industry grew at a faster rate. As economic activities augmented, numerous eateries and hotels of different styles and sizes were established, which catered to the requirements of the travellers and the general public.

 The India Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC) was set up in October 1966 with the objective of developing and expanding tourism infrastructure in the country and thereby promoting India as a tourist destination. The ITDC succeeded in achieving its objectives by promoting the largest hotel chain in India and providing all tourist services such as accommodation, catering, transport, in-house travel agency, duty-free shopping, entertainment, publicity, consultancy, and so on, under a single window. It also offered consultancy services from concept to commissioning in the tourism field for private organizations. 

The ministry of tourism, government of India, gave top priority to the development of manpower to meet the growing needs of hotels, restaurants, and other hospitality-based industries. For this purpose, 21 institutes of hotel management and catering technology and 10 food craft institutes were established by the end of the 1980s. These institutes offered three-year diploma programmes and one-year craft courses. The students not only introduced professionalism in the industry but some of them also started their own business. The hotel management programme imparts adequate knowledge and training in the core operational and managerial areas of the hospitality industry.

 This enables students understand the environment and execute their job professionally. The students who become entrepreneurs run the business confidently, create job opportunities, and contribute to the society. In 2002, the ministry launched a programme called capacity building for service providers (CBSP) to train persons engaged in small hotels, dhabas, eating joints, restaurants, and for those handling tourists such as immigration/airport staff, security/police personnel, guides, taxi operators, bus drivers, and so on. 

The objective was to provide short-term training to improve their etiquette, behaviour, and attitude towards tourists. Under this scheme, a new programme called Project Priyadarshini was launched in 2005 to impart training to women in taxi driving/ operation, entrepreneurship such as setting up souvenir kiosks, and so on, to adopt tourism as their profession. The Government of India, Ministry of Tourism had launched a special initiative, called Hunar Se Rozgar Tak (HSRT), in the year 2009–10, for creation of employable skills specific to Hospitality and Tourism Sector amongst youth. All these measures taken by the ministry have brought in quality and raised the service standards in the food service industry in India. Even those who did not undergo training were forced to implement professionalism to sustain in the market. They either employed trained and qualified hands or they themselves underwent training to manage the operations effectively. 

 Prior to the emergence of well-established network of communication and transportation, people across the country had very little contact with each other. Regional diversity in terms of food, cloth, culture, and lifestyle acted as a separating factor for the people of India, giving birth to regionalism. For example, when it comes to food, Punjab is famous for its rich and mouthwatering delicacies, and West Bengal for its milk sweets. Due to well-developed communication networks, faster transport across the country, and boom in the catering and hotel industry in India, cuisines are no longer confined to their own regions but have overlapped and influenced each other. People living anywhere in our subcontinent can now enjoy delectable cuisines of any region from the restaurant chains flourishing all over the country. 

 Civil aviation developed rapidly soon after World War II. The introduction of international flight services in 1948 and additional services in the mid-1950s encouraged a lot of foreigners to visit India and also many international chains of hotels such as the Holiday Inn, the Sheraton, and the Intercontinental, and so on, started their operations in India. The Oberoi group established the first franchised hotel with the Intercontinental hotels in Delhi in the early 1960s. Today, many international chains of hotels, such as the Marriot, the Hyatt, the Le Meridian, and the Kempinski, and so on, are operating in India and many more are coming. The Hotel Corporation of India, a subsidiary unit of Air India established hotels, the ‘Centaur Group’ in the mid-1970s near the major airports primarily for catering to flights and the transient guests. Globalization policies of the government, fast means of communication and transportation, rapid industrialization, introduction of private air transportation and no-frills airlines, Internet facilities, and the establishment of a network of well-organized travel and tour operators have made the world shrink and the movement of people has become very easy and fast. A lot of foreign food service organizations such as McDonald’s, Pizza King, Dominos, Subway, and so on, have set 

Food and Beverage Service up their operations in India, which has made local restaurateurs fine-tune their operations in order to compete with these outlets. Nirula’s and Haldiram in the north and Saravana Bhavan, Adyar Ananda Bhavan, and Annapoorna in the south are doing well in the food service industry. Radhakrishna Hospitality Services offers catering services to industries and schools in a big way. Wineries, especially the ones in Maharashtra, are coming out with wines to complement Indian dishes. Trained and qualified manpower, professionalism, availability of wide range of cooking and service equipment manufacturers, food technology, consumer demand, change in the lifestyle of our citizens, lack of time to cook, media influence, increased influx of foreigners, and so on, have changed the face of the Indian food service industry. Food service sectors continually change their style of operation to meet the changing needs of the customers. Today, we have top quality restaurants in India that are comparable with international standards.

Reference and Bibliography

1.Food and Beverage Service SECOND EDITION by Oxford University Press