Restaurants take Diwali celebrations home, bet on catering, party boxes
Manish Mehrotra will be taking Indian festive flavours to an international audience when he travels to Singapore with his team in the coming weeks to curate a Diwali celebration at 67 Pall Mall, a private club. Back home in Delhi, his modern Indian restaurant Nisaba is preparing for a busy season, with private parties, intimate gatherings and catering orders lined up for Diwali.
Across the restaurant industry, operators are looking to tap the growing demand for home celebrations, offering everything from hors d'oeuvres to curated menus and chef-curated party boxes and food orders for private gatherings.
“Everyone has their own way of celebrating, and food is almost always at the heart of it,” Mehrotra told Mint.
The aim is to capture a larger share of festive spending as celebrations pick up pace at home after the Navratra season. Several chains said they are expecting a 3-7% increase in business in the December quarter, owing to an increase in private parties, typically of 30-50 people, at homes over the two-week period.
Festive catering
In Mumbai, Bellona Hospitality, which operates restaurants across several cuisines, will focus on customized menus and food packages for home and corporate celebrations. Its brand, Ishaara, a modern Indian restaurant known for its inclusive dining format, as well as its pan-Asian and Italian restaurants, is expected to see strong growth.
The company is looking at outdoor catering orders for groups of 30-120 guests, with prices starting at about ₹1,500 per person. “People don’t want the shebang of the whole restaurant coming over. We also make curated boxes, which cater to parties perfectly,” said Prashant Issar, managing director of Bellona Hospitality and founder of Ishaara.
He said the business typically involves parties of 25 or more guests, while per-person spending on these occasions has risen 18-22% year-on-year to ₹1,500-5,500.
Corporate meal boxes, priced at ₹700-1,500, are another revenue stream, particularly when companies place high-volume orders. Bellona expects business to increase by 5-7% in November, with outdoor catering and gourmet deliveries.
Similarly, back in Delhi, Yuna Weddings, an upmarket events planning business, has already signed up for three upscale Diwali private parties with menus starting at ₹6500 per person.
Diwali party packs
Other restaurants are betting on larger delivery orders. At Daryaganj, the North Indian restaurant chain known for its butter chicken and dal makhani, deliveries typically rise by about 30% in the lead-up to Diwali, said co-founder Amit Bagga. The increase is particularly evident in Noida and Gurugram, where customers tend to place larger orders for home gatherings.
Daryaganj has received multiple catering requests but does not offer outdoor catering, Bagga said. Instead, larger delivery orders will serve customers hosting friends and family. The restaurant is also taking pre-orders for its Six Senses Festivity Gift Box, a curated selection of items from the brand, and plans to scale up the offering for Diwali gifting.
The opportunity sits within a food services industry valued at ₹5.69 trillion in fiscal year 2023-24 (FY24), according to the National Restaurant Association of India’s India Food Services Report 2024. The report projected the market to reach ₹7.76 trillion by FY28, growing at an annual rate of 8.1%. The fine-dining segment alone was estimated at ₹5,080 crore in FY24. Festive home-party orders are a growing part of the business.
“For Diwali, we receive a lot of bulk orders around the country when people host parties at home. We expect this season to see some growth too in our delivery traction, on the eve of Diwali, Dhanteras and the day post Diwali too,” said Sagar J. Daryani, co-founder of Wow! Momo. Compared to a normal weekend, the restaurant would see delivery go up by 20-25%.
Similarly, another operator, Enoki Hospitality Pvt. Ltd, which runs a portfolio of delivery brands, including Ambersar Enoki, across the National Capital Region, Bengaluru and Chandigarh, has introduced its Festive Gatherings party packs to cater to demand for orders serving 20-40 people.
Its co-founder, Mansher Duggal, told Mint that they expect the packs to generate higher order values and incremental festive revenue, although it is too early to quantify the overall impact. Duggal expects growth of 2-5%, depending on how the season unfolds, with most of the traction likely to come after Navratri.