Promos, offers drive food sales during IPL
EatSure served as the official food delivery partner of the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) driving on-ground activations on match days in the city.
New Delhi: The Indian Premier League (IPL) matches in April and May helped lift sales for restaurants, with deliveries and takeaways seeing a spike.
Restaurant chains said value offers and promotions also helped drive sales during the cricketing season, highlighting lingering strain on consumer demand. Demand has been steady during June, they added. The jump in orders came after the industry faced a slump in the March quarter on account of consumers facing a period of high inflation.
“IPL period was quite good, delivery was high. We are also seeing dine-in go up slightly, which is a good sign because we make more money on dining-in. February and March were very bad—one of the worst quarters we have seen, barring the covid period. May has been good, June has been decent so far. However, we are seeing a lot of demand for value-for-money offerings. We launched this Momo-Mania at ₹69; a lot of it is selling. People are more value-conscious, and focussed towards saving money,” said Sagar Daryani, CEO & co-founder, Wow! Momo Foods.
Meanwhile, online sales doubled for restaurant chain California Burrito this season compared to the previous year. “We ran discounts for about five to eight weeks this year, versus all eight weeks last year. We also saw over 30% same store sales growth in delivery on an already high base of last year (this is also with aggressive Great Indian Restaurant Festival and Zomato Carnival campaign running),” said Bert Mueller, co-founder and CEO at Bengaluru-based restaurant chain California Burrito. Business improved sequentially too, he said. Delivery sales were up 11% during IPL over March, said Mueller, whose company operates over 50 outlets in India.
At its post-earnings call mid-May, food services company Jubilant FoodWorks Ltd that operates Domino’s Pizza in India said it is witnessing seasonal uptick in the ongoing quarter. “And India has a lot of feasts and fasts coming, and those cycles can also change. IPL is another boost to the pizza-eating time. So, whatever seasonal upticks that we see, we are definitely seeing that,” said Sameer Khetarpal, the company’s CEO.
Meanwhile, food aggregator Swiggy said demand rose in India’s smaller cities. The company witnessed “remarkable” growth in tier-2 and tier-3 cities. “For these regions, the IPL is not just a sporting event; it’s a festival that unites communities. Initiatives like Match Day Mania have been cherished by fans for years. As cricket enthusiasts across metros and non-metros placed orders while enjoying the game on multiple screens, Biryani emerged as the top favourite, with over 12 million orders this IPL season,” said a Swiggy spokesperson.
However, consulting firm RedSeer said that aggregators turned frugal this IPL season, shying away from big-ticket ad films on TV. Rather than relying on extravagant and attention-grabbing advertisements, they implemented subtle and low-key strategies to focus on profitability. This resulted in a 7% spike in business for online food aggregators during the IPL season, they said in a 1 June report. Despite the limited action by online food aggregators, the latest IPL generated online food ordering use cases among tier 2 and 3 consumers, RedSeer said in a note.
Rebel Foods’ online ordering platform Eat Sure that houses multiple food brands such as Faasos, Behrouz Biryani, Wendy’s and Oven Story Pizza drove new customer acquisitions in Bengaluru this IPL season, Addarsh Barathi, brand head, EatSure said. EatSure served as the official food delivery partner of the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) driving on-ground activations on match days in the city. “As a result of this association, EatSure witnessed a remarkable 50%+ increase in customer acquisitions and revenue specifically in the city of Bangalore,” he said.
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First Published:14 Jun 2023, 11:18 PM IST
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