Have you tasted the new ‘Anti-Corona omelette’ in town?

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” they said. This may help a struggling juice shop owner (sincere apologies for the pun). 

Published: 18th March 2020 05:48 AM 

S Daniel of Madurai, who runs a restaurant, has put up posters announcing ‘Anti-coronavirus Food Festival’. He sells egg and chicken food items at discounted prices since their sales have dropped following COVID-19 outbreak | Express

By Shobana Radhakrishnan

Express News Service

MADURAI: “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” they said. This may help a struggling juice shop owner (sincere apologies for the pun). But, nobody has ever told a restauranteur what they should do when life gives them unsold grill chickens and omelettes? Apparently, a local restauranteur cracked it. All he had to do was to prefix the dish names with the term ‘Anti-Corona’; slash the rates and pepper the offer with free immunity-boosting rasam. 

Guess what! Now he has successfully hatched himself out of the chicken and egg situation. S Daniel, runs a restaurant here and has put up posters announcing, “Anti-coronavirus Food Festival”. Speaking to TNIE, Daniel said his attempt was to counter the rumours that eating chicken and egg would cause COVID-19. “The rumours took a toll on our business. The wholesale price of one kg chicken has slumped to Rs46 from Rs146. Similarly, the wholesale price of 30 eggs dropped from Rs145 to Rs100.”

“We understood that playing defense won’t work anymore; hence we switched to an aggressive pricing model,” he added. His strategy of not chickening out of the rumours proved right. “We are getting impressive reception for the offers; we will continue the offers till the end of March,” Daniel says with a grill, oops! grin. 

The offers go like this: Buy Rs200-worth anti-corona chicken grill, get 10 parottas free; buy Rs20-worth anti-corona omelette and Rs500-worth bucket biriyani, get 10 eggs free. You may think that the renaming is just a come-on. Think not, because Daniel offers free immunity-boosting rasam aka Indian soup to every customer. Akin to Daniel, a butcher in Vandiyur is offering one kg chicken free in purchase of one kg meat.