FOODMALL ON EXPRESSWAY
It's been 15 years
since the mumbai pune expressway became functional. The daily vehicle traffic
then was 15k grown now to over a lakh vehicles.
In 2002 the Foodmall
was a great halt for traffic from Mumbai thane. It was the first of its kind in
maharashtra and the mall was a challenge to large scale catering, catering to
different classes, catering to different taste and top it all catering to daily
10000 cars/ buses.
It was like a small
food town planned with food stalls serving maharashtrian, southindian, punjabi,
chinese meals n snacks, along with stalls of chaat, sandwich burger, dhokla…...
u name it and that item was available. Beverages hot n cold, prepared and
packaged were available. There were shops for chikki to chocolate, paan and
tobacco.
The magnitude of
malls operation then has changed 3 fold. In 2004 just to give insight in
operations read the following data -
Cars 15000, private
buses 110, ST buses 300
Food cooked -
batatwada 8000pc, misal 200kg, idly- wada 9000pc, samosa 5000, other foods
approx 300kg, tea 20000 cups, water bottles 6000 etc
Travellers visiting
toilets 25000. The average time taken to serve food (self service) from buying
coupon to being served was 12 minutes….a neat competition to MNC food chains
All this managed by
a team 120 staff round the clock.
To cope up with
increasing crowd, Foodtrack was opened in 2004 for exclusive use of car
travellers. This had a food court and AC restaurant.
Being on main
connecting route of mumbai pune many VIPs made a halt, celebrities of film prem
chopra, ashok saraf, sadashiv amrapurkar, TV crews, TV stars to name few were
regulars.
From 2002 till date
the quality is still maintained though hygiene standards have lowered. Even the
grooming and smile of food counter service boy is missing.
I still recommend
both these spots for halt on expressway and yes it takes a maximum of 20
minutes to have your snack and get in car back….still a stiff competition to
MNC food chains.
Enjoy the
batatawada, misal, kanda bhajiya, idly dosa, samosa, kothimbirwadi, chole
bhature...all are yummy and not oily.
