RailRestro, which is food tech startup has been witnessing a steady traction in number of meals ordered by passengers travelling by train, is looking to expand its services to 300 stations in the next one-to-two months. It currently offers its services across 220 stations across the country.
Plans are afoot to expand its presence further to around 450 stations in 2022.
According to Manish Chandra, co-founder and director of RailRestro, the pandemic has brought a huge difference in the lifestyle of people and they have got more cautious about what they consume. This has led to increased traction in meal bookings on its app. The trend is only likely to strengthen further moving forward.
The Covid-19 pandemic had not only disrupted train services but had brought to a complete halt the e-catering services in trains. So RailRestro’s operation was also stopped temporarily. However, the Indian Railways allowed e-catering on trains again from February 1, 2021.
“When we opened in February this year, we were booking close to 4,000 meals a day, now that has increased to close to 10,000-12,000 meals a day. We are currently present across 220 stations, down from close to 250 stations during pre-Covid. However, the kind of traction we are seeing we plan to scale up our presence to 300 odd stations in the next one-to-two months and further increase to 450 by the end of 2022,” Chandra told BusinessLine.
The company is hopeful of booking close to 25000 meals a day by March 2022.
RailRestro is an online food delivery service, which serves meals on trains. The app is available on play-store which can be used by passengers to order food on train. The company has a wide network of vendor tie-ups with restaurants across the country. Customers can book food as per their choice, online, on the website, or via the app, with their PNR number.
“We had tie-up with close to 2,000 restaurants pre-Covid, that has increased to over 2500 at present,” he said.
Focusing on deliveries
RailRestro, claims to have served more than 30 lakh customers with 60 lakh meals from the time of its inception till now. It has close to 30-35 per cent repeat customers.
The company is conducting a pilot for picking up own deliveries from restaurants. Currently majority of the restaurants arrange for delivery of food at their end but now RailRestro is looking to add its fleet of delivery staff to ensure that the food reaches the customers on time.
“Currently we are arranging for deliveries at close to 30-35 stations and we plan to increase the service across 200 stations by the end of this year. If you hire delivery guys then you need to have the required volumes, now that we have it we are planning to scale it up,” he said.
