Good food at IRCTC? Yes!

We might not have given too much thought to the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC’s) central kitchen in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. Probably because we could have food to be unpalatable most of the times or simply because we do not enjoy “train” food. But next time you travel by train, be sure to eat the food simply because it comes from a state-of-the-art smart massive kitchen and also because apart from Indian Railways, it provides lunch to some of the MNCs and big company canteens of India, Ministries of External Affairs , Commerce and Finance, IIT and many more Govt institutions. It makes and serves 10,000 meals a day on two trains – Ahmedabad Rajdhani and Sealdah Duranto. It also provides 6,000 snack items to trains such as Patna Rajdhani, Howrah Rajdhani, and Mumbai August Kranti, among others. Overall, about 45% of the meals are delivered to trains and 65% sold to institutions.

The kitchen is automated to some extent with equipment sourced from Rosinox of France, Hackmann of Finland, and Sottriva of Italy, apart from Ahmedabad-based Servotech. Currently, IRCTC just about manages to break even as it is not allowed to hike prices at its own will for food being supplied to the Railways.

The kitchen is modern, with massive chappati makers that roll out uniform-shaped chapatis in less than 80 seconds. It has steam kettles, which cook up tonnes of well made rice and a cutting machine that chops up about 400 kg of vegetables in an hour. It is a Mini Ratna and has notched up a turnover of over Rs.700 crore.

And here we thought, it was a fledging and sick unit, serving poor quality meals! Maybe a good candidate for divestment?