With less than a week left for Deepavali, crowd of people in sweet shops is swelling by the day. It is customary for people to round off their shopping with a visit to these shops to buy sweets and savouries.
This festive season, sweet shops in the city have come up with new varieties such as Pista Burfi , Beeda Rolls and Cashew Mysore Pak . Aavin has introduced sugarless milk peda for the first time in the city.
Following an increase in prices of milk and ghee, the shops have increased the price of milk sweets by at least 10%. “Since the beginning of September, we have increased the price of milk sweets like milk peda and Kalakhand by ₹40 a kg,” said M. Jayakumar, Director of Jayaram Bakery.
The increase in price have made people to buy less number of milk sweets, said R. Mani from Jaihindpuram. “I usually buy about 25 kg of milk sweets to distribute them to my friends and relatives. But this year I have bought less number of milk sweets and more of less expensive varieties,” he said.
Though people prefer fancy and modern varieties to keep up with the trend, there are always some customers for traditional snacks like thenkuzhal , thattai , mullu murukku , maaladdu and adhirasam , said T. Kamala who runs Sumangali. “This year we have been receiving orders from families of the newly-wed,” she said.
But it is a bitter-sweet Deepavali for most of the sweet stalls, as the bulk orders placed by corporates have reduced drastically. “Till today we received only 30% of the usual orders from our regular customers. Usually this is the time when shops are busy finalising their orders. But this year it was not so,” said I. Syed Abu Thahir, salesman at Lakshmi Vilas.
“We did not anticipate such a lacklustre period,” said M. Azhagappan, sales manager of Harish Bakery. “We have temporarily stopped preparing additional quantity of sweets. But we are hopeful of making up the loss by Deepavali when sale hots up,” he said.
