Just under a kilometer shy of the revered Ram Janmabhoomi complex where the new Ram temple was opened to the public on January 22 in Ayodhya, Dinesh Yadav finds himself grappling with the challenges of setting up his Domino’s pizza shop.
Despite opening it recently, he is having a brisk business.
“On the first day, I did a business of around Rs 5,000 and on the second day, it was Rs 4,500. We will do well,” Yadav told this reporter.
Domino’s is the first fast food chain outlet that has come up near the vicinity of Ram temple.
Yadav said: “We started in a hurry. This shop is very small. The construction work is still on. We cannot cater to the customers in large numbers from here. Though we opened our shop on January 28, we are already looking for a big shop.”
On the other hand, approximately 8 kilometres from Ram temple, Awadh Kumar Verma, who oversees operations at Pizza Hut, in Mall of Awadh, rues the lost opportunity to have a shop near Ram temple.
“Pizza Hut opened this shop around three months back when the temple consecration date was announced. But now we are looking for a shop at Ram Path because the crowd is jamming that area. We are having a fairly good business but getting a shop there would set the cash counter ticking,” he said.
Pizza Hut is ready to serve all vegetarian food in Ayodhya. “Non-veg food is banned in Ayodhya. Though we are 8 kilometres from the main temple and outside the Panch Kosi Parikrama Marg, we do not serve non-veg food items here. The menu is ‘all veg’ affair,” he said and added: “Once we get a place in Ayodhya city, we will continue to serve vegetarian items.”
He said they needed to open a shop at Ram Path – the earlier the better.
Ayodhya is a no-liquor and no-meat zone where mutton and alcoholic drinks are banned inside the Panch Kosi Marg. “We have offers from big food chain outlets to set up their shops in Ayodhya. We welcome them with open arms but there is only one restriction, that they should not serve non-veg food items inside the Panch Kosi,” Vishal Singh, a government official in Ayodhya, said.
The Panch Kosi Parikrama is a 15-kilometre pilgrimage circuit around Ayodhya, passing through sacred sites linked to the Ramayana.
Singh says some outlets that are famous for their non-vegetarian food items have set up their units outside 14 Kosi Parikrama Marg – which is justifiable.
“The KFC has set up its unit at Ayodhya-Lucknow highway because we do not allow non-vegetarian food items here. We are ready to provide space to even KFC if it decides to sell only vegetarian items. As its specialty is chicken, there is a big no from our side,” he said.
Ayodhya would not be the first city where serving non-veg food and alcohol would be a big no within the city area. Even in Haridwar, liquor and mutton are forbidden inside the city, and therefore the food chain outlets serving non-veg food items KFC are on the Haridwar-Roorkee highway.
According to estimates, Ram temple in Ayodhya is likely to see traffic of 10-12 lakh people per week till Ram Navami – April 17 –and the number of visitors to the town is expected to remain high even after that.
Officials vouch that the food chain conglomerate has estimated a business of over Rs 100 crore, which is quite feasible, realising the way pilgrims are coming to have a darshan of Lord Ram in Ayodhya.
Sharad Kapoor, president of Faizabad Hotel Association (FHA), says that the character of the devotees coming to Ayodhya has changed in the last seven days. “The first few days we had people from the neighbouring districts who came to have a darshan, but now people from other parts of the state are also coming to Ayodhya,” he says.
“As these people are coming from different parts of the country, they are well conversant with pizzas and burgers. Therefore, the food chain outlets famous for pizzas and burgers are making a beeline to set up their shops in Ayodhya now,” Kapoor says.
Kamlesh Srivastava, Bharatiya Janata Party city president of Ayodhya, said that 311 Aastha Special Trains would bring devotees from across the country for darshan of Ram Lalla. He said the administration was making arrangements so that these devotees get food of their taste and so they were inviting big food chains here.
The Ayodhya Development Authority has plans to set up a food plaza at Chaudhary Charan Singh Ghat. The construction work has started and the outlets would be ready by the mid of February, Srivastava said.
