foodmall on expressway

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.