IRCTC to resume cooked food service from today

February 14, 2022 Hot from the Oven Valli Sarvani No comments

The Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) started e-catering services in 2014 to help passengers get cooked food on trains. With this service, train passengers can place an order for food from various food outlets and restaurants to be delivered to their seats and berths. This service is helpful to passengers to get local and regional food during train journeys. Before COVID-19, IRCTC served around 20,000 orders per day.

But, IRCTC suspended serving food on trains due to COVID-19 restriction from March 22, 2020. As the active COVID-19 cases in the country declined, IRCTC decided to resume cooked meal service on all trains starting from today, i.e. February 14.

Currently, train passengers are served ready-to-eat meals on-demand. The ready-to-eat meal service was started by IRCTC in August 2021. Railways restored cooked food services in around 80% of trains in January 2022.

Cooked food services were restored on premium trains like Duronto, Rajdhani, Shatabdi etc., in December 2021. Now it decided to resume cooked food services completely on all trains.

In other words, 30% of cooked food services were restored in December 2021 and 80% in January 2022. It decided to restore 100% by February 14, 2022.

Passengers can place an order for the food as follows: Visit the IRCTC website and select Meals on the home screen. You will find three options: Order food, Book food and Cooked Food Menu. Click on ‘Order food’. The website will lead to the ecatering website.

Enter your PNR number and click on submit. You will find a list of cafés and restaurants, from which you can choose your food. Place your order and select the payment mode, online or cash on delivery. You can pay online for your order. Or pay in cash on delivery of the food. Your food will be delivered to your seat or berth.

Image Credit: AbhiSuryawanshi / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons