Guess what? If you are passing through one of the 45 stations of Indian Railways, you can now place order for food through an SMS or through IRCTC’s online.
Railways food bookings have soared after IRCTC linked e-catering to stations instead of trains. On Sunday, IRCTC got online orders for 1,000 meals against the earlier trend of 80-90 meals a day.
Earlier, e-catering used to receive daily orders totalling an average of 80-90 meals, while this has recently more than doubled after it was introduced as a station-based facility. This is according to a release.
Initially, this was a service offered only to passengers travelling through trains.
A few days ago, towards September end, Railways threw open the food-on-track service to all passengers on trains passing through 45 stations.
The station-based ‘Food On Track; facility would be available for all trains passing through the 45 stations: Howrah, New Delhi, Chennai Central, Mumbai Central, Delhi, Bangalore City, Patna, Lucknow, Bhubaneswar, Madurai, Amritsar, Thiruvananthapuram Central, Kanpur Central, Allahabad, Chandigarh, Gorakhpur, Sealdah, Guwahati, New Jalpaiguri, Vishakhapatnam, Mughalsarai, Varanasi, Jaipur, Bilaspur, Kharagpur, Anand Vihar, H. Nizamuddin, Ludhiana, Secunderabad, Tirupati, Vijayawada, Chennai Egmore, Ernakulam, Kozhikode, Thrisur, Yasvantpur, Nagpur, Pune, Agra Cantt, Gwalior, Jhansi, Bhopal, Ahmedabad, Surat and Vadodara
Advantage Domino’s PizzaWhile IRCTC has also roped in many partners, Sunday was clearly Domino Pizza’s day, as the Jubilant FoodWorks pizza delivery service brand accounted for 700 of the 1,000 online meals ordered. This is according to sources in the know.
Partners of IRCTC include Domino’s Pizza, KFC and Travel Food Services (who will take charge of Biryani Bhai, Copper Chimney, Curry Kitchen, Masala Kitchen, Desi Treat and Cafe Chino) and Punjab Grill will deal with the street foods section.
mamuni.das@thehindu.co.in