Business is at its peak for restaurants and small shopkeepers selling bottled water, cold drinks and fruit juices as Goans look to quench their thirst this summer season, writes Bhiva P Parab
Water, it is said, is the nectar of life. The adage is at its peak during the summer months when nothing quenches our thirst best than water.
Summer is the season when the demand for water, cold drinks, lime-soda, tender coconut water and fruit juices is at a seasonal high. In Goa the summer demand for beverages is fuelled by weddings and domestic tourist footfalls. It is the time of the year when small shopkeepers, restaurants and street food vendors stock up their shelves with all types to meet the rise in demand. Hotels in state report that their cash registers are jingling non-stop, as most of the people buy various kinds of soft drinks to drink on the spot or to take home to drink along with their family.
With each passing day the mercury is inching upwards during the summer season. As per the Indian Metrological Department, Goa, summer started early in the state this year. In late- February, parts of Goa recorded a maximum temperature of 37 degrees. Since them the heat wave came down a little due to rains, but the average temperature for most of the days is 34-35.4 degrees, said the IMD. The weather forecaster has predicted higher than normal temperature by about 1.5 degree, in the approaching month of May.
Vishal Bhobe in Panaji market, says that his sales of cold drinks started moving up from around the beginning of March. “There is not much of margin in selling cold drinks which is about 3-5 per cent per bottle. “The margins however add up when we start selling more. April- May are the two months when the volumes go up and a low-margin product like cold drinks becomes profitable,” he explains. Bhobe discloses that, his sales of cold drinks are about 25 per cent higher in the summer season. “It is important to ensure that soft drinks, bottled mineral water, etc., is kept cold and readily available as chilled to customers,” he says. Bhobe’s observation is that a customer will prefer to go thirsty without a cold drink than buy it warm in the blistering summer.
Other shopkeepers point out that, 50 per cent of their sales of beverages are in the four summer months. During these months there is a surge in both in-home and out-of-home consumption.
“Most residents have a 1-litre Pepsi bottle in the refrigerator at home. But they still end up spending money for a glass of juice when they come to the market to buy groceries,”says vendor Javed Sheikh. He says that watermelon juice sells the most during the hot weather, followed by sugarcane juice, mosambi juice and chickoo milk-shake.
At the all-India level, bottled soft drinks have emerged as one of the fastest growing categories in the food industry with a household penetration level of 40 per cent in the months of March-May. The household penetration has been rising steadily in post-pandemic times. “Close to 54 per cent of the Indian households purchased cold drinks for in-home consumption in the last 12 month period ended May 2024, according to a report by a market research firm. The report said that, summer penetration for the first time crossed the 40 per cent mark in May 2024.
Restaurant establishments said that, the cold drink business which is steady during the year usually witnesses a seasonal spike during summer. “The market for cold drinks is fluid. Summer is the period when we see customers willing to try new brands and flavours launched in the market. It is the period when we face dearth of space to display various varieties launched by companies,” said a restaurant owner.
Goa being a tourism hotspot has high soft drink and bottled water consumption during the summer months. The roadsides kiosks and gaddos in the coastal belt say that nearly all tourists who visit the beaches end up buying water to drink after a visit to the beach. For restaurants in the coastal best, chilled water is the top selling beverage in summer. They said that, the doctor’s advise of drinking eight glasses of water a day is proving to be beneficial for sale of cold water. “The food industry does not work on market per se. Tourists economise on shopping if they have less money, but they cannot do without a cool bottle of Bisleri,” is their view.
With consumers becoming health conscious shoppers are asking for non-carbonated and sugar-free drinks. Traditional drinks like jal-jeera and limbu pani are giving stiff competition to branded soft drinks marketed by MNC companies. Manufacturers are therefore coming up with a wide variety of juices with no added sugar or with Indian flavours. Sales of lassi and butter milk are also high during summer.
