Millions of Indians, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are known to observe fast and refrain from consuming foodgrains and some other ingredients during the nine-day Navaratri festival, beginning on Saturday. To tap into this ‘holy market’, leading fastfood chain, Domino’s Pizza, is temporarily converting nearly half of its outlets into pure vegetarian snacks providers — and also introducing new pizza varieties specially for the fasting devout.

“We are converting 460-plus of our 1,060 quick service restaurants (QSRs) into 100 per cent vegetarian outlets from October 1 to 10 — mainly in states such as Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana and New Delhi — that will offer only vegetarian stuff,” Dev Amritesh, President and Chief Business Officer, Domino’s Pizza India, told BusinessLine .

Last year, the chain had offered similar all-vegetarian snacks at nearly 130 outlets, but this year it has been scaled up. “Looking at the response, we hope to make it an annual feature of our business plans” he said, adding this is an “unprecedented” move in India’s fast-food industry.

The innovation was prompted by the fact that the during Navratris, many fasting Indians refrain from eating certain food ingredients. Consumption of certain other ingredients, correspondingly, hits a peak during these nine days. A majority of those fasting prefer to consume only vegetarian food and avoid non-vegetarian altogether.

This year, Domino’s Pizza has also come up with a ‘Navaratri Combo’ offering consumers special recipes and ingredients widely used during the festival. Priced at Rs 249, the Combo will have a 100 per cent vegetarian pizza made of water-chestnut flour ( singhada atta ), and white millet flour ( Samak ke chawal ka atta ). It will be topped with fresh mozzarella cheese with rock salt, tomatoes, paneer and crunchy sabudana. The tomato sauce, made without onions and garlic, will use rock salt rather than common salt, he said.

The menu includes sago pudding (Rs 55), a sweet dessert made of milk and sabudana, topped with blue berries, and sabudana crispies (Rs 49) with tangy tamarind dip.

All the identified restaurants will serve the new Navaratri Combo along with other regular vegetarian items, and will be available for dine-in as well as delivery (offline and online delivery), Amritesh added.

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