NRAI asks top mall owners, landlords to give rental waiver to F&B retailers

Amid rapidly rising coronavirus cases, the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) on Friday wrote to top mall owners and landlords seeking a complete waiver of rentals and common area maintenance in case food and beverage businesses are completely shut for dine-in.

The restaurant body suggested pure revenue share for the period when restricted operations are imposed, in the open letter.

Restricted operations shall mean things like delivery only or limited hours of operations or limited capacity utilisation, etc., it said.

The NRAI also sought minimum guaranteed rents for three months after that and instead work on a pure revenue share model.

"The restaurant industry, with an annual turnover of about Rs 4.25 lakh crore and providing direct employment to over seven million Indians, is currently in a precarious situation due to the restrictions imposed on account of the third wave of the pandemic," the NRAI said in the letter, adding that the sector continues to fight a grim battle for its survival.

It observed that a large part of the industry managed to somehow survive the first two waves of lockdown and sailed through due to collective efforts of all stakeholders and similar efforts are once again required to prevent fresh rounds of business mortalities and job losses in the sector.

NRAI President Kabir Suri said, "While the first two waves of the pandemic crippled us badly and resource crunch forced many restaurants to shut down, we see a larger concern with this third wave as it may actually hurt consumer sentiments in the near term which is already visible.