‘Hundreds of restaurants will shut down in B’luru’

If you are a Bengalurean who is clued into the Food & Beverage scene here, then the reports of restaurants opening and shutting down may not be news.

But in the past two years, the situation has been especially grim. After The Smoke Co, Bflat Bar and Restaurant and The Humming Tree, the new name to join this list is Monkey Bar, Indiranagar.

As the place that gave India the concept of a gastro pub, the news of closing the first one in the chain (there are Monkey Bars in Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi) isn’t good and Manu Chandra, Chef-Partner of the establishment is displeased.

“Monkey Bar had become an iconic brand. And it all started here. It took the concept of the gastro pub and essentially made it national. Everyone wanted to open a gastro pub because we gave them a great model for a young generation of Indians and here we are. Closing a business you own is distressing, this is your baby but the constant over policing and constant fingering to just ensure that you cannot run a business no matter how compliant you are did it for us,” says Chandra, also the Bengaluru Chapter Head, National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI).

Days before making the announcement, Chandra sat down with TOI to talk about the problems crippling the restaurant business in Bengaluru.

What ails the restaurant business in Bengaluru?

From being an easy, fun, vibrant city, Bengaluru has definitely turned towards the worst in the last two years. Two years ago is really when it started and this year has been even worse. I wouldn't attribute it to an economic downturn because the mode of entertainment in the city for the most part has been going out to restaurants, pubs, bars, breweries etc, and that’s why with the growing population we have seen a proliferation in restaurants. But somewhere along the line some agendas were at play, there seemed to be a moralistic highground that the government seemed to want to hold up.You have legislation and legalities and paperwork constantly thrown at you. The authorities started digging through all kinds of rules and made knee-jerk reactions.

Such as?

When the Bombay fire happened, for instance, they suddenly wanted every restaurant in Bengaluru to have a Fire NOC, which as per the rules that were laid down for a Fire NOC were untenable. That is because the requirements were so stringent that you essentially have to break down an entire building and build it again from scratch to bring a Fire NOC into play. It was impossible. And then all kinds of clamp downs started. Forget ease of business, doing business itself became impossible. Then the Indiranagar Resident Welfare Association decided to file a PIL in court saying that they wanted the entire Indiranagar de-commercialised. Then, the Public Entertainment License (PEL) issue came into play which the Supreme Court upheld. So, now suddenly you needed an occupancy certificate which 92% of Bengaluru’s buildings do not have. Today, if you don't have an occupancy certificate, you can’t apply for a PEL, which means you can't play music. So with all the restrictions at play, and this music thing happening, there is just no way a business is going to be able to survive. We were suffering tremendous business losses.

Today, Bengaluru’s image of being this cool, cosmopolitan city is partly also because of the active food scene. Would you say the clamp downs may be silently killing the cash-cow?

The city’s many restaurants, bars and pubs drive excise revenues. Excise almost contributes 27% of the state’s exchequer. The F&B industry brought a whole bunch of people into the tax bracket. We are all GST-compliant even though GST hit us very hard with no input tax credit. And then, there’s the employment generation and the subsidiary employment generation - in terms of the supply chain, logistics etc- which grew because of this active scene. All that now, has basically been destroyed because there’s no political will or no forward thinking. Loose and poorly structured laws ensure that we are always at the receiving end. Which is entirely counter-productive.

Source:- https://retail.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/food-entertainment/food-services/hundreds-of-restaurants-will-shut-down-in-bluru/72126324