Baskin Robbins has set up a new plant in Pune at Shirval that can make 7.5 million litres per shift to meet the robust demand for ice cream in the Indian market and the Indian subcontinent.
Apart from growth in footfall at its ice cream parlour, the company has seen a steady uptake in online sales. Around a third of its sales were now coming from online and delivery platforms like Swiggy, Zomato, Instamart, Big Basket and Zepto, Mohit Khattar, CEO, Graviss Foods -Baskin Robbins said. Baskin Robbins entered India through a joint venture with the Graviss Group, owned by the Ravi Ghai family.
Khattar said the online segment would grow further if they could deal with last-mile cooling needs for home delivery of ice cream. Currently, ice creams are being delivered in ice boxes or some other kind of container, but they are working on some solutions with better insulation that would be best suited to deal with the heat outside, he said.
Their data showed that people who walked into their parlours were the ones ordering online. So, the company was looking to grow their premium (Rs 69-350) ice cream parlour chain. The company’s 850 parlours in 239 cities accounted for 67% of the turnover. “We are the second-largest QSR chain in the country with a presence in Tier I, II and III markets. We will be adding another 100 stores,” Khattar said.
While the demand was robust and they were growing 30% year-on-year, faster than the industry growth of 15%, the only concern for them was the rise in the prices of key ingredients like milk and milk products. Baskin Robbinsonly uses cow milk and cream, so they have been impacted by the price rise but have decided to hold prices for the season, Khattar said. They had expected the prices to cool down, but this had not happened. Milk prices had gone up by 25% in a year, and they would take a call in September-October about increasing prices, Khatter said. But this had hit margins by 2–3%. Their last price hike was nine months ago.
The company is launching ‘Pizza Ice Cream’, a first in this category, which is an eight-inch brownie base with a layer of ice cream on top and toppings on it. This follows the success of their ice cream cakes. They also had a new ice cream format called ice cream rocks, which are bite-sized ice creams coated with chocolate and other flavours.
For the summer season, Baskin Robbinshas expanded its product line with 17 new products, including caramel milk cake, blueberry and white chocolate, and fruit ninja.
According to Khattar, the Indian ice cream market was at around Rs 19,000 crore in 2022, with the unorganised sector still accounting for 55-60% of the market. An IMARC Group report said the ice cream industry in India was expected to grow 17.5% between 2023 and 2028, to Rs 50,000 crore.