A good news for rail passengers: Now, they can order and enjoy hot pizza and burger at their berth while travelling. In fact, a pilot project of a ‘station-based e-catering’ service has been launched by the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC). The service allows passengers to order meals as per their choice, which will be delivered at stations from popular private caterers.
IRCTC group General Manager, East Zone, Debashis Chandra says, “Station-based e-catering will be only for stations and not on moving trains. The service will allow passengers to order meals or pizzas either online at www.ecatering.irctc.co.in or by calling 0120-2383892-99/ 1800-1034-139 (toll free) or by sending SMS Meal to 139 with details of PNR and seat number and the meals will be delivered at their berth”.
In the first phase of the project, all trains passing through 45 specified railway stations, including nine in the east zone, namely Bhubaneswar, Visakhapatnam, Kharagpur, Howrah, Sealdah, Guwahati, New Jalpaiguri, Patna and Mughalsarai have been named.
While, the other stations under this project are namely, New Delhi, Allahabad, Kanpur Central, Bhopal, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Kozhikode, Gwalior, Jhansi, Thrisur, Yasvantpur, Nagpur, Pune, Varanasi, Chennai Central, Mumbai Central, Delhi, Bangalore city, Madurai, Amritsar, Thiruvananthapuram Central, Chandigarh, Gorakhpur, Varanasi, Jaipur, Bilaspur, Anand Vihar, Hazrat Nizamuddin, Ludhiana, Chennai, Egmore, Ernakulam, Agra Cantt, Secunderabad, Tirupati, Vijayawada, Surat and Vadodara.
Here it worth-mentioning that reputed food chains such as Haldiram, Bikanerwala, Nirualas, McDonald’s, KFC, Switz Foods, Pizza Hut, Only Alibaba, Dominos and Sagar Ratna have also entered into a tie-up with IRCTC to serve the passengers passing through these stations.
The delivery of food would be made through only authorized persons. Passengers have an option of making payment online or through cash on delivery mode, on receiving the meals.