Highway’s upper crust

Jaswinder Singh looks longingly at the cars zipping past his dhaba. Not one of them pulls up. But it wasn’t always so lonely on the roa...

Jaswinder Singh looks longingly at the cars zipping past his dhaba. Not one of them pulls up. But it wasn’t always so lonely on the road. Till recently his Lucky Dhaba near Shahabad on the GT Road was doing brisk business. He had taken it on a monthly rent of Rs 20,000. Money well spent, he’d told himself. That is in the past now. The dim lights of his modest dhaba are no match for the beckoning neon lights of McDonald’s, Domino’s and Nirula’s that have all hit the highway.

All along the GT Road between Chandigarh to Delhi, old timers dal makhni and butter chicken are being elbowed out by Big Macs and family size pizzas. At Karnal, luxurious cars are being steered towards the well-managed parking lots of these new arrivals from the city.

THE change began over a year ago when Vikram Bakshi of Delhi bought a local hotel and restaurant near the Haryana Tourism-run Oasis. He set up a food court in his resort, Savoy Green. McDonald’s, Domino’s, Dosa Plaza, Chop Sticks, Kwality Express and Ammirettos put up their counters. A shopping plaza, a video arcade and a cyber cafe came up next. The resort gets over a thousand customers with sales crossing the Rs 1 lakh mark every day.

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Sagar Ratna is the other crowdpuller. M.C. Bhatia, a Ludhiana builder took over more than 30 acres to start a resort and to bring Sagar Ratna. Now, it has a loyal clientele, mainly South Indian tourists. According to a rough estimate, in the peak season its sales hover around Rs 50,000 daily.

Fresh competition is already on way. Politician-turned-media baron J.K. Jain is setting up Haveli, a nine-acre ethnic resort for Punjabi delicacies. It is likely to be open in another two months. Besides a food park, it will have 24 rooms—the number will eventually go up to 70—and a shopping mall.

‘‘We would offer star category food on dhaba rates to tourists,’’ says Vikas Chawla, General Manager of Haveli. The proposed restaurant will have a seating capacity of about 350.

GETTING new glitzy neighbours all of a sudden has stumped dhaba owners. Not knowing how to deal with this competition, they are now back to concentrating on their traditional clientele: truck drivers.

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Business for the dhabas is so bad that a local Congress leader abandoned his six-year old dhaba to his employees recently.

‘‘We are also seeing the competition coming and hope for progress,’’ says Ashok Mehta of Zhilmill Dhaba, the first among all dhabas on this stretch.

Initially the only danger posed to dhabas was by Haryana tourism outlets. The Haryana Tourism Development Corporation had opened its outlets at Ambala, Kurukshetra, Karnal, Panipat, Samalkha and Rai—but except its fast food counter at Oasis in Karnal, all others struggled.

But Oasis planted its flag firmly and caters to 2,500 to 3,000 customers daily, earning Rs 3 crore every year. Now like the dhabas, it too is getting nervous. ‘‘No doubt there is tough competition, especially after MNCs and leading names of the food industry are coming up around us,’’ says Murari Lal Mittal of the Oasis. But he hopes to tide over the crisis.

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Many on the highway too hope the dhabas will come out of this lean phase. After all, as A. K. Gupta of Delhi who has an adhesive tapes unit at Baddi, says: ‘‘Dhabas still have their own charm. The dal makhni of dhabas has no match.’’