Food

Restaurants, food business and what India is eating.

FSSAI Just Moved Most of India's Food Businesses Out of Licensing. Is That the Right Trade?

FSSAI raised the basic-registration ceiling from ₹12 lakh to ₹1.5 crore turnover, moving a huge swath of small food businesses out of state licensing. It's real relief for street vendors — and a real question about who inspects the middle.

22 Sept 2026 · 4 min read

Food

The Supreme Court Rejected FSSAI's First Fix. Now Comes the Red Label — and an Industry Warning It Could Cover 80% of the Shelf.

FSSAI spent years resisting front-of-pack warning labels, tried a watered-down numerical table instead, and had it rejected by the Supreme Court. Its replacement — a red hexagon reading HIGH SUGAR, HIGH SALT or HIGH FAT — is the label Chile ran for a decade, with the purchase-behaviour data to prove what it does.

22 Sept 2026 · 5 min read

Food

Swiggy Just Became the Company It Spent Years Saying It Wouldn't

Swiggy is spinning Instamart into its own subsidiary and shifting it to an inventory-led model — the same playbook Blinkit has run for years while Swiggy insisted on a lighter marketplace approach. The pivot arrives after Instamart kept losing money while Blinkit pulled ahead.

4 Sept 2026 · 5 min read

Food

India's Three Biggest Restaurant Chains All Grew This Quarter. Only One of Them Kept the Money

Devyani, Jubilant FoodWorks and Westlife Foodworld all reported revenue growth and positive same-store sales in the June quarter. Their profit lines tell three completely different stories — and the one with the best customer traffic came out worst.

3 Sept 2026 · 5 min read

Food

GST Was Cut to Make Food Cheaper. Food Inflation Just Went Up Anyway.

GST 2.0 dropped restaurant meals and most packaged food to 5%, some staples to nil. Nine months later, India's food inflation accelerated to 5.52% in July, driven by an onion price spike a tax rate can't touch.

30 Aug 2026 · 5 min read

Food

The FSSAI Crackdown Just Hit KFC, Starbucks and Your 10-Minute Delivery Warehouse

A nationwide FSSAI and FDA sweep has hit major chains and quick-commerce dark stores over rodent infestations, expired stock and broken cold chains. The bigger question is whether it's a real fix or a headline-driven flare-up.

28 Aug 2026 · 5 min read

Food

Flipkart Is Charging Restaurants a Third of What Swiggy and Zomato Do. It Still Might Not Be Enough.

Flipkart is entering food delivery in Bengaluru at a 10% commission, against Swiggy and Zomato's 16-30%. It's launching into a market where two companies already control more than 95% of orders — and where cheaper alternatives have tried this before.

25 Aug 2026 · 5 min read

Food

Swiggy Built an AI Tool to Show Restaurants Their Payouts. Restaurants Are Still Threatening to Walk Out on August 31.

Swiggy's new AI assistant Guru promises restaurants exactly what a thousand-plus Bengaluru eateries have been demanding for months: clear payouts, consented campaigns, tax reports. The boycott deadline is still on for August 31 — because a better dashboard and a lower commission are not the same fix.

23 Aug 2026 · 5 min read

Food

Two Biscuit Giants Are Suing Each Other Over a Black Wrapper

ITC is suing Britannia in the Calcutta High Court over the packaging of a cheese-flavoured biscuit — a fight that's really about a ₹51 crore-a-year snack and what a rival launch might take from it.

20 Aug 2026 · 5 min read

Food

Bengaluru's Restaurants Were Going to Boycott Swiggy and Zomato. They Didn't — a Cheaper Rival Showed Up First.

Bengaluru restaurants planned to stop taking Swiggy and Zomato orders from August 15 over commission cuts. The boycott has been pushed to August 31 — right as Flipkart entered the same city charging roughly a third of the fee, and a flat-fee rival kept expanding.

19 Aug 2026 · 5 min read

Food

FSSAI Just Banned Old Monk, Bagpiper and McDowell's Rum. It's Not Really About the Rum.

India's food regulator has pulled Old Monk The Legend, McDowell's No. 1 Rum and Bagpiper Deluxe from shelves over artificial flavouring and false age claims — the latest move in an enforcement campaign that's now running over 800 cases.

18 Aug 2026 · 3 min read

Food

FSSAI Has Started Regulating Adjectives, and the Food Industry Is Not Ready

The regulator has ordered Dabur to stop selling products carrying '100%' claims. The interesting part is not the company — it is that the rule being enforced says no food product may make that claim at all.

13 Aug 2026 · 4 min read