Fine dining restaurants in the city did brisk business during the Durga Puja with higher occupancy than last year and equalling pre-Covid days record, an official of the Hotel and Restaurant Association of Eastern India said.
The West Bengal government had lifted the 10.30pm deadline for restaurants from October 10 to 20 and allowed them to function under usual operating hours during the period.
"The customer response has been great since this year's Puja came with night curfew relaxations, people stepped out in large numbers and visited restaurants mostly as all the pandals were no-entry for visitors," said Sudesh Poddar, president of the Hotel and Restaurant Association of Eastern India.
Debaditya Chaudhury, co-owner of Chowman, Oudh 1590 and Chapter 2 chain of restaurants said "We are super pleased with the sale for it was as per our expectations. Both dine-in and delivery were excellent! This time we witnessed a rise in dine-in sale and made a profit by 25 per cent more compared to the last year".
Also, this year the crowd was more into dining out than the usual pandal hopping scenes. We were literally managing a huge queue every hour with people filling in and the all-over response was great. There were times when our staff could not afford a break because of the crowd outside the restaurant premises all throughout the day, especially during lunch hours and post 8pm.
"Although we suffered a little on Dashami due to the rain, our delivery took the front seat and backed us up on Dashami," he said.
A spokesman of 6 Ballygunge Place said "We have been doing 600 covers (footfall) in each outlet of ours including the original one at Ballygunge till Saptami. Even on Ashtami, there were around 600 covers in each.
"On Nabami we had about 450-550 footfalls and on Dashami around 300-350 in each restaurant. So, the dine out figures speak for themselves, it is certainly higher than last year," he added. The restaurant chain has outlets in Salt Lake, Chowringhee Road and in Behala and Kasba area of city.
Abhishek Kajaria, director of Hammer located on Park Street said "on Sashthi, crowd was decent. We saw big footfalls on Ashtami and Navami. We had also added a special late hour menu comprising some new dishes for the festive days which our patrons really liked.
"The relaxation really helped a lot. It gave us a breather as people didn't hoard the place at once. They got extra hours so though there was rush, still it wasn't overcrowded," he said.
Kajaria said while last year the sale was below average but this year, the sale was good.
"Vaccination is one reason while another being the extended window for operation. It is not matchable with 2019 though as corona did not exist and people were more frenzied during the festive days," he said.