INS515 Perspectives on Retail:

University Cafe vs Food Stall

Name: Abhishek Mulani

Roll no: AU2314029

Why I go to university cafe?

These are the following reasons:

● Convenience
● Affordable
● Spacious
● Hygienic
● Fast service
Why I go to food stall?

● Tasty food than the university cafe

● More Variety
● Fast service
● Accept cash payment (whereas university cafe
doesn’t)

When we think about university cafe, it’s a place where a

lot of socialising happens as the cafe is situated at
university center. All the students during their break are
there, and they eat food from the cafe maybe because
their friend group is having food from there or they have
less time and want to avoid the hassle of going out of the
university and having it from there as there maybe less
time between classes for the same.

When I particularly look at lunch time, people generally

order the fix thali from the menu as they want to have a
heavy meal and it is relatively cheaper than having a thali
from somewhere outside.
If I recollect the first time I visited university cafe, it was
quite empty and we were quite confused as to how can
we order food and what are the prices and we were
guided by the staff at the cafeteria about the SmartQ app
and the entire process of ordering.

Contrary to this, food stalls outside the university don’t

have any such systems and they offer a better taste than
university cafe. These stalls are famous in the entire city
as people from different areas visit here just to have
maggie, frankie, pasta and sandwiches. These dishes
serve as a quick satisfaction from hunger as one feels
quite full after 1 frankie from any of the stalls outside. If I
look at a student who is a part of the university, he/she
atleast has food from these stalls twice in a week. It can
be anything from frankie, maggie, Bhel, sandwich or just
a small cup of tea.

I have also observed that people who are from outside of

Ahmedabad take a lot of time to adjust to the food taste
here as they believe that food that they used to eat at
their home town is much better. There maybe many
reasons behind this, one of them maybe that these
students have an emotional connect with the town/city
they used to live in and miss the food which was served
there.

If I recollect the first time I visited these stalls outside

university, it was during the first week itself and I went
with one of my friends and we had a frankie. I spoke with
the stall owner and he told us that you can take my
contact and you can order also on call so that we don’t
have to wait. These are the kind of services that they
provide to the customers to retain them.

Though as all of us have seen, these stall owners have to

face a lot of challenges and there is resistance from
university also. Sometimes suddenly police comes and
asks them to not keep put up their stalls at these places.
Last week itself, the stalls werent put up outside our UC
gate and they weren’t there outside the CEPT campus
also.
Both of these places create a different image in the
consumer’s mind. While one eats at university cafe, they
are mostly sure that the food is hygienic and they wont
fall sick because of consuming it as all of us can see the it
is served fresh in front of our eyes. While at food stalls
also it is prepared at the moment itself, there is still a risk
in the consumers’s mind that whatever they are eating
might affect their health in some way.