Author: Piyush Chhaochharia

If you step back and observe how consumers interact with food today, one thing becomes clear very quickly: they decide fast. Not after reading the menu, and not after finishing the dish, but in the first few seconds.

The Indian foodservice market is a beautiful, chaotic, and overcrowded jungle. New brands pop up on Swiggy and Zomato every hour, screaming for attention with flashy packaging and deep discounts.

If there’s one thing we’ve learnt from watching Indian menus evolve over the last few years, it’s this: consumers are no longer interested in choosing sides. They don’t want to decide between indulgent or healthy, fast or crafted, premium or affordable.

You can have a Michelin-star recipe and a prime location, but if your signature butter chicken or your Peri Peri fries taste different every Tuesday, you don’t have a brand; you have a gamble. And in 2026, customers don’t gamble with their money; they reward consistency.

Holi service isn’t just slow. It’s also loud, fast, and thirsty. You’ll have people walking in after a morning of Holi fun, families dropping by in groups, and guests wanting something cold before they even look at the food menu.
That’s why drinks matter so much during the festival.

It’s 2026, and if you aren’t treating your beverage menu as the heavyweight champion of your balance sheet, you’re missing the biggest trick in the book. Let’s look at the hard data: India’s non-alcoholic beverage market is currently on an explosive trajectory, projected to reach $64.2 billion by 2033 with a CAGR of 7.6%.

Five years ago, the beverage menu was an afterthought, a side hustle to your main cuisine. Today it is one of the biggest profit engines for a food business. The current wave of Indian consumers are more savvy, adventurous, and demanding when it comes to the overall beverage experience.

Your restaurant’s kitchen is busy with orders piling up, and suddenly your team has to begin improvising. You don’t realise how important inventory is until a key ingredient runs out mid-service. That’s not a menu problem. It’s an inventory problem, and it always shows up at the worst possible time.

You’ve got the lights strung up, the music queued, and the starters sizzling in the kitchen. But when it comes to the drinks menu, it leaves a lot to be desired. You could revert to a boring default: soda, juice, or a tired mocktail that no one really finishes.