The Hindu Business Line : Future Group plans Blue Foods restaurant brands in airports

While Blue Foods is expected to run the operations at the airports, Alpha Future would bring in restaurant brands under its airport-retailing venture.

Mumbai April 18 Kishore Biyani's Future Group is planning to enter the restaurant and catering business at airports. Having forged a 50:50 joint venture with the Alpha Airport Group, it intends to launch restaurant brands belonging to Blue Foods such as Bombay Blues and the Noodles Bar.

Considering that the Future Group had, in the recent past, picked up a 50 per cent stake in the Mumbai-based restaurant company, launching some of the latter's brands, as part of its airport-retailing venture with the Alpha Group, is an imminent possibility.

Restaurant Brands

Speaking to Business Line, Mr Paul Topping, Managing Director, Alpha Airport Group, said: "Alpha Future is looking at the restaurant and catering business in airports. We would be utilising the brands belonging to Blue Foods." While Blue Foods is expected to run the operations at the airports, Alpha Future would bring in restaurant brands under its airport-retailing venture. "We are looking at all aspects of the restaurant and catering business and expect Blue Foods to give us technical advise in this area," he added.

Since the UK-based Alpha Airports Group Plc also has a flight catering business, it expects to draw synergies from the Future group to launch airport restaurants in the country.

Airport Retailing

Mr Topping said, "We understand the Indian market and have been dealing with the Indian sub continent for the past 11 years. The largest portion of our business continues to be the duty-free shops."

Recently, the Future group had launched its first duty-free shop at Indira Gandhi International airport with an 8,000 sq ft floor area, including two outlets at the arrival and four outlets in the departure area of the airport.

Bagging the contract for a period of 39 months, Alpha Future expects to get additional space within the airport taking up 15,000 sq ft in the future.

Meanwhile, airport-retailing is expected to have it's own challenges. Highlighting the problems associated with the concept, Mr Topping added, "It is still an unknown territory and the profile of the customers is different at the different airports. While there is window of opportunity, there are time constraints to capture customers."

Besides statutory conditions, high security issues pose impediments to airport retailing.

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