Bitter times for sweet shop owners, sale down to 20%

Parveen Arora

Tribune News Service

Karnal, June 6

Sweetmeat shops, which used to witness a huge rush prior to the Covid-induced lockdown, are witnessing a dismal response as customers are refraining from buying their favourite treats, fearing lack of sanitisation.

Owners are struggling to meet the daily expenses in the lockdown as they are witnessing 20-25 per cent sale. They fear the sale is unlikely to pick up pace for another couple of months.

There are around 500 sweet shops in the district. They were allowed to reopen during Lockdown 3.0 with directions to ensure social distancing and not to allow customers to sit or eat at the shops. They were also asked to keep sanitisers at shops and make masks mandatory for staff and customers.

“Prior to the lockdown, our desi ghee sweets were in full demand. We were allowed to open shops from May 9, but people are not showing any enthusiasm. Only a few customers are turning up to purchase sweets,” said Bhupinder Bhatia, owner of a sweet shop.

He said they used to prepare multiple sweets in good quantity earlier and almost all shelves would be empty in a day, but now they were preparing select items in limited quantity, fearing loss due to less demand.

Meanwhile, some sweet shop owners said the shifting of labourers to native states had forced them to work with limited manpower. Dimple, a shopkeeper, said employees were not willing to come despite several requests.

Moreover, people were afraid of eating outside food due to the Covid scare.

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