New Delhi:
Gearing up to serve 20 lakh meals in 12 days, transporting French fries from Canada and fresh lettuce from Nainital and marshalling a troop of 1,200 people -- for Samar Qureshi, the last 40 days have been a "challenge of a lifetime".
Qureshi is the Director of Fast Trax Food Pvt Ltd, the exclusive food licensee for the user pay category of the Commonwealth Games 2010. The company is expected to deliver world-class food to domestic and international spectators and media persons from around the world.
"We have been working for almost 14-15 hours a day since we were given the contract 40 days back to exclusively supply food at all the 12 stadiums of the CWG and the media centre at Pragati Maidan," Qureshi told PTI.
Describing the task as a "challenge of a lifetime", he said, "Now we are ready to serve spectators across all the 12 stadiums through 97 outlets." Qureshi said his company is expecting to serve nearly 20 lakh meals during the Games being held from October 3-14.
It is employing about 1,200 people for carrying out the task of providing food such as burger combos, vegetarian and non-vegetarian wraps, various tikka rolls, curry boxes and sandwiches, which are priced between Rs 50 and Rs 150.
"There will also be special items like Dilli ki Biryani," he added.
One-third of the manpower has been drawn from various hospitality institutes and utilised on the production side.
The rest have been equally distributed for counter handling and hawking, he said.
In order to execute the operations without any glitches, the company has booked a central warehouse of 50,000 square feet at Okhla in South Delhi, from where all the frozen and chilled foods will be taken to the respective venues.
"About 15 refrigerated vans are used to transport the food items to each of the event centres, where we have a main kitchen and smaller warehouse," Qureshi said.
There is strict control over standards as well. "It's a question of pride for the nation, the company and my own. We are not taking any chances. That's why we are even importing the French fries all the way from Canada," he said.
Other items like "field fresh" lettuce are being transported from Nainital.
Packaging materials have been imported from Malaysia, while many of the handling equipments have been flown in from as far as the US, he said.
Qureshi said he is also drawing strength from his past experience of the company providing outdoor catering services during the Hockey World Cup, held here earlier this year.
"We have had similar challenges, especially during the Hockey World Cup when we got just 25 days to prepare. This time around the scale is of course bigger, but we are ready," he said.
Qureshi said catering to the hockey venue is expected to be challenging due to the rush of spectators. "Handling the demand in other venues wouldn't be much of a problem as the crowd is expected to be smaller," he said.
When inquired how much the company has invested on the whole exercise, he said: "Must be about Rs 5 crore on a conservative estimate, but we are not necessarily looking at making profit as a success at the Games would mean more success in our future business."