Sweet shops across Kolkata saw sales surpass the pre-Covid figures this Vijaya Dashami.
Mishti lovers stood in long queues outside several shops in the city since early morning on Wednesday. As the day progressed, the demand kept soaring, prompting sweet shops to ramp up production and procurement of raw materials.
Sweets of all varieties, including sandesh, rasogolla and doi kept flying off the shelves with many owners saying the flurry brought back memories of the pre-pandemic days.
“Before the pandemic, the volume of milk that we would procure to prepare the Vijaya sweets would remain more or less the same every year. This year, the procurement surpassed all pre-Covid figures,” said Partha Nandy of Girish Ch. Dey and Nakur Ch. Nandy, a sweet shop in north Kolkata.
“Even in terms of business volumes, we have crossed the figures of 2019.”
Nilanjan Ghosh of Mithai said: “The growth in business volume is more than one-and-a-half times compared with the pre-pandemic days because of the collective sales during the Puja and on the occasion of Vijaya Dashami. The sales volume this time has surpassed that of the pre-pandemic period.”
“It’s lovely to watch mishti lovers thronging the store without masks again.”
Members of Mishti Udyog, a body of sweet and savoury makers of Bengal, said the state’s Rs 2,000-crore sweetmeat industry has been battling a slump since the outbreak of Covid-19 in India in March 2020, despite the state government’s attempts to soften the blow by relaxing some curbs for the sweet shops a number of times.
Many shops were forced to down their shutters during the festive season in the past few years because of the lack of footfall.
There was hardly any counter sales during the pandemic days, said the owner of a popular sweet shop.
Ghosh of Mithai said: “The demand for some of our products, including Kumkum, Gurer sankha and Kesar kanchagolla, are so high that we have realised it is not possible to meet it even after ramping up production.”
Mishti lovers who stayed away from visiting shops during the pandemic were ready to wait for 15 or 20 minutes for their favourite variety this Vijaya Dashami.
Outside several shops, buyers were found waiting for the refill after the products of their choice were sold out.
“When you want to gift mishti, you can’t settle for anything less than the variety that you have in your mind. I would be carrying the sweets to my parents in Burdwan,” said Abhijit Hati, a Kasba resident while waiting outside a prominent sweet shop in the area.
Some shop-owners admitted that it isn’t easy to match the demand.
“The pandemic was such a blow that we had to postpone the launch of our state-of-the-art workshop in Howrah. Last year, we used to source our processed raw material from the workshop before giving the finishing touches in Kolkata. This time, we are bringing the finished products from the workshop directly to our counters to meet the huge demand,” said Sudip Mullick of Balaram Mullick and Radharaman Mullick.