Industry news
A taste for foreign food
Last updated: 06 June 2008
Sadashiv Nayak, CEO, Food Bazaar
Increasingly, the Indian taste buds are not only getting used to the international cuisines but are integrating it into their food habits, thus heralding a change in the composition of the food plate. However, at India Food Forum 2008, experts in the field pointed out that assimilation of food from outside India, has always been there, even though the process has gained momentum, with the ever increasing global exposure and the availability of foreign food options.
The participants at the session, "Scope for foreign food', was anchored by Sadashiv Nayak, CEO, Food Bazaar, posed a thought provoking question at the outset. "In this kind of a cultural mix that has huge regional taste variations, what role really do imported and international foods have to play?
Soon after, he partly answered his own question. "Anything that this panel can bring directly or through their influences-in the form of international products and imported ranges can only easy the pain of filling up a 6,5000 sq feet store. Its going to give me a much wider range to fill up stores that are larger than 6,500 square feet in size."
Talking about the demand for international food, Nayak said, "there is a strong aspirational class emerging in the country". The food honcho brought the challenges before the foreign foods very well as well. He said that since India is a MRP driven country, the margins are restricted by what the MRP of each products is. However, he also pointed out, without mincing words, "When we try and push some of these products in our stores, the first reaction is: "Please don't push them anymore, because they don't sell".
Some very interesting observations were made by some of the other participants. Ajay Gupta, MD, Capital Foods, pointed out that even a food like samosa, which is understood to be quintessentially Indian has come from Kazakhstan, if we go historically. He further said, "As vendors, we believe that consumers need to be shown the window of opportunity of what he or she can experiment with, rather than the retailer taking a judgemental decision of what will sell and what will not sell".
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