Every dawn brings a new coldest day of the season, with yesterday's minimum of 6.5 degrees Celsius making Sunday's 7.3 degrees Celsius look just about a degree tame in comparison for morning walkers
Every dawn brings a new coldest day of the season, with yesterday's minimum of 6.5 degrees Celsius making Sunday's 7.3 degrees Celsius look just about a degree tame in comparison for morning walkers. The cold wave in Vidarbha continues to affect the city and the temperature is expected to drop to 5 degrees Celsius.
And the people in the city are keeping their spirits high by downing more spirits. While restaurants, hoteliers and multiplexes are suffering heavy losses, pubs and bars are doing brisk business this winter.
"Rather than getting affected, we are doing better business. In this weather, people come out to have hard liquor and that is where we score above the regular family restaurants," said Jaavved Khan, owner of lounge bar Elbow Room at Dhole Patil Road.
Besides booze, hookah parlours are also doing well.
"We serve liqour as well as hookah and because of that we have a lot of crowd coming in. These things are more enjoyable in the cold," said Damanjit Singh, owner of the Village Rooftop at NIBM road.
Vijay Kutty, president of Pune District Wine Traders Association, said that the cold is expected to bring a leap in sales by about 10 to 15 per cent as compared to sales last year during the same period.
"Cold is good for our business. In fact, most of us would want it to stay a bit longer as hard drinks are selling fast in the chilly weather as can be seen right now in the city," said Kutty.
However, the fortunes of restaurants and hotels in the city have not been so good.
Ganesh Shetty, president of Pune Restaurants and Hotel Association, said that about 3,500 hotels that have open-air venues or serve only food are suffering about 20 to 25 per cent loss in business.
"The cold is having an adverse impact as customers do not want to come here with their kids. They prefer to sit inside but how many can we seat? The maximum hit is our most popular barbeque section which is in open area," said Naveen Rajwal, general manager, Yellow Chillies at Koregaon Park.
G B Shetty, manager of FC road's Vaishali restaurant said the last two days saw maximum impact. "We have an open seating area which is the most affected. The maximum impact was on the last two days when it was cold and also we were expecting more customers as it was a weekend," he said.
The story is similar at multiplexes where late night and morning shows are running to empty halls.
"The afternoon shows are fine but when it comes to late night or morning shows, ticket sales have dropped drastically. The few who brave it out must be those coming in a car. Theatre goers using bikes or autos cannot be blamed if they can't make it in this cold weather," said Sagar Thorat, manager at City Pride multiplex.
Mall owners say that business has not been affected to a large extent. "There hasn't been much impact. The serious shoppers still come and business maybe down by maximum five per cent. The pulling factor is the festive season which obviously balances it out," said Mahesh Chugh of SGS Mall.
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