Farmers Movement Archive

Opening of city malls, restaurants brings cheer to veggie suppliers

Tribune News ServiceJalandhar, June 13The opening of malls, restaurants and religious places has brought cheer among the vegetable suppliers in the district. Their sinking business has finally started gaining pace after over two months of lockdown.With relaxations in lockdown and easing of some quarantine measures, the customer graph of the suppliers has started moving upwards. However, even as the business has started getting back on back on track, they are fearful of the fluctuating trends. Mohan Kant, a commission agent at the renowned ‘Jagdish Chandra and Gursharan Kumar Vegetable Distributors’ said their more than 50 per cent business has resumed after huge losses suffered during lockdown.We pack vegetables for sale in both wholesale and retail markets. Malls, shopping complexes, marts, restaurants and colleges are among our major customers and instead of selling all staple vegetables in the sabzi mandi, we prefer selling our major chunk of goods in malls only. —Mohan Kant, A commission agent “At our local store in Maqsudan Sabzi Mandi, we pack vegetables for sale in both wholesale and retail markets. Malls, shopping complexes, marts, restaurants and colleges are among our major customers and instead of selling all staple vegetables in the sabzi mandi, we prefer to sell our major chunk of goods in malls only. As per their demands, we stock our supplies accordingly so that there wouldn’t be any chance of compromising on the quality of the vegetables purchased by the customers. We pack the vegetables in special bags only and packing is done keeping in view the customer demand in malls,” added Kant, who is now waiting for resumption of their supplies in educational institutions.“Notably, the differently-packed vegetables fetches us money as we get buyers with good purchasing power for our vegetables and fruits at big stores in marts. Comparing the difference in profits in the sale in the local mandis and malls, there is a gap of over 10-15 per cent revenue,” he added.Rajkumar, who works for the same dealers, said, as per the directions of our owners, we make seperate packings of one kg, two kg and five kg. Post lockdown, we have again resumed this work. To sustain our business, we manage to keep our earning running by selling our goods to local vendors.

The Tribune

2020-06-14