GUWAHATI: The restaurant owners in Guwahati have come together to form a common platform named “All Assam Restaurant Association” for various outlets of the food industry based in Assam. The members of the newly formed association met for the first time at a meeting held at NEDFi House on 30th June last.
In a statement they said that the need of an association was felt in the past few months because of the serious issues faced by the restaurants and fast food outlets in the state related to food safety, statutory requirements, online delivery platforms, waste disposal, water supply, impact of social media and others.
With a 21-member core committee and also with the presence of 150 restaurant owners, a resolution was adopted to form an association of the owners. Present at the meeting were Chef Atul Lahkar, owner of Heritage Khorika, actress Nishita Goswami who represented her ethnic Bengali restaurant Icchapuran, Tapan Baruah, owner of Momo Ghar, Rajnish Goswami, food entrepreneur, Samrat Deka, director SRD Group and Bhuban Gam owner of Gam's Delicacy, among many others.
Speaking to G Plus, Dipankar Das, who is associated with Kolkata Rolls and is a member of the newly formed association, said that the motive of the association is to create a strong and common platform for food service industry in the state. “The motive behind forming the association is to have a common strong platform for all the restaurant owners so that we can work with common motives in terms of government related work like applying for license or single window licence and list out rules and regulations for running a restaurant,” said Dipankar Das.
The association has also planned to make a list of common suppliers from where all these restaurants would purchase their raw food supplies. “Right now most of the restaurants are buying supplies from various suppliers in the market which sometimes compromises with the food standards. For that reason we are planning to send a request to the government to check out a list of common suppliers for all the restaurants which will be best in the market to supply us the raw materials and we hope the government soon creates a segregated market for the members of the association where we will have to buy meat from a specific supplier, milk for example from Sitajakhala and others of that kind of mass suppliers. Such a decision will immensely help us and would provide value in terms of price and also provide us good products,” said Das.
The association has also planned to conduct regular Corporate Social Responsibility activities (CSR). The other thing that the association has planned to do is create and negotiate a common discount rate for the online food delivery apps so that discount and commission rates don’t vary from restaurant to restaurant. “We have planned to negotiate with the online food delivery apps to form a common discount and commission structure for all the member restaurants because at times, these apps give heavy discounts and provide us with less commission which in terms becomes heavy on us. That is the reason why we are seeking a common structure for it so that it can be a win-win situation for all - be it the food delivery companies, the restaurant owners and the customers as well,” said Das.
The association will follow strict norms for inclusion of restaurants in to the association and adhere to food safety measures for give customers better quality hygienic food. “To ensure that food safety standards are maintained up to the mark we will only include restaurants with proper and valid trade licences. All members need to have a physical restaurant and a valid Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) licence. We will not accept any restaurants as members if one of the above criteria is missing,” said Das.