HYDERABAD: Even as the government has eased restrictions and given the green signal to cafes and dine-ins to conduct business with reduced capacity, the fear of contracting Covid-19 is keeping customers indoors. The difficulty in following physical distancing and the possibility of transmission of the virus through the staff or currency notes are a few of the fears that a diner has to face while stepping into a restaurant. The scenario is the same in cafeterias in offices which have started operating with skeletal staff in the city.
A tech-led cafeteria management company has come up with a multi-pronged approach to address these various possible channels of virus transmission. HungerBox, which has over 100 clients in Hyderabad, is providing tech-based solutions to maintain safety protocols in cafeterias, movie theatre canteens and other F&B spaces. Talking to Express, Sandipan Mitra, co-founder of the company, said: “Office cafeterias see the highest footfall between 12 pm and 2 pm, during which some 3.2 lakh currency notes are exchanged in a month.
Through our app, an employee can buy a meal which will eliminate the need of exchanging currency notes. According to MHA guidelines, cafes can operate with 50 percent capacity. If an employee books a meal after the prescribed capacity is reached, she will be asked to wait for 20 minutes. In the meantime, her meal order will be passed on to our vendor partner, who will keep the food ready. Using a QR code generated by the app, she can enter the meal section and get her food without any waiting time.”
The platform also provides solutions to maintain a distance of six feet between people in the dining area.
“We have developed three technologies — based on bluetooth, radio frequency and camera feeds — to issue proximity alerts once a person violates physical distancing. The companies can opt for any one of them to use in their cafeterias,” added Sandipan. Apart from these, the company also takes care that all food ingredients that enters the establishment are sterilised. It also ensures that the cafeteria management staff undergo thermal checks, wear masks and gloves.
— Kakoli Mukherjee kakoli_mukherjee@newindianexpress.com @KakoliMukherje2