The tale of chain stores

Nilratan Halder | Published: May 16, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: May 15, 2015 17:12:25

An outlet of a chain store in the city

There has been an explosive growth of food chains in recent times. Are the urban people following their counterparts in the West where few families cook their meals at home? Nucleus families with both partners doing jobs requiring time and attention hardly have scope for and the will to prepare food at home. The best option for such couples is to visit a restaurant or a food chain to satisfy their hunger. When they have children in the family, they feel even more restricted for regular cooking and thus have to eat out. They have to take extra care of their kids and have little time for cooking.
This city has not become westernised in any sense, except of course one. This concerns the concentration of money in a few hands. Where there is money, there is some escapade of sort. Moneyed people are generous in spending on foods, pastimes or any other products which somehow or other earn popularity or name for reasons genuine or not. A Birani house of old Dhaka is a household name in the entire city. But not all people can visit the original eatery located in the labyrinth of crowded old Dhaka. So the business acumen of its owners has helped them found a solution to the problem.
They now supply their much sought-after foods to many outlets they have opened in different corners of the city. First they started selling from a van at Motijheel and within an hour the birani sold like hot cake. Now people do not have to move from their locality to procure this special food. In the past though, people with a purse enough to afford the birani were not so lucky.
However birani is not the only item that has moved closer to the people. Brand fast food chains and bakers have also spread so in a ubiquitous manner. So have the super shops or department stores. And the famous sweetmeat outlets are not lagging behind. In fact, some of the old sweetmeat brands can actually claim their pioneering role in this endeavour.
Something remarkable has happened of late. Or else, such mad rush for opening outlets one after another in different localities could not come about. At a time the more famous bakers or fast food outlets were confined to posh areas where the affluent people lived. Now not-so-famous urban zones are fast becoming home to many such outlets. Mr. Baker's has opened three outlets at Mohammadpur - two of them within five minutes' walking distance and the other within 10 minutes' from one of the two.
Then Prince Bazar and Meena Bazar, two department stores, have been doing business opening more than one outlet in the same area -not far from one another. Swapno, Agora and a few other rivals to those have also made their presence known there. In fact, Prince Bazar and Agora are now facing each other directly from opposite sides of a road.
People are getting accustomed to shopping under one roof, no matter if the vegetables or fish they purchase there are of low quality compared with the fresh varieties available in the kitchen market. One of the reasons is saving time and the other of course is to make a strong statement of the purchasing power. It should not escape notice that the mistress of the house is engaged in a serious exercise to decide what else she can purchase to touch the bench mark set by the outlet for free gifts. One should not be surprised if the gift is cheaper than what has been opted as an extra buy.
One has every reason to wonder if customers in adequate number visit the sweet or baker's shops where the items are so costly. If unsold items are destroyed after the expiry date, it can be a good reason for raising the price tag to astronomical height. Otherwise there is no reason why bread, cake, pastry and various items of sweetmeat would be as pricey as they are. They are supposed to make profit. But the outlets' penetration seems to be more intense than is necessary. Their competition should have kept the prices low. But surprisingly, one's appearance with a higher price tag only induces others to raise the bar lest customers think their product is of inferior quality.
What they all forget is that by doing so they are restricting many customers' access to their food chains. Moreover, the practice does not correspond to sound economic theories.