Two friends who run a streetside food stall in Yusuf Sarai in New Delhi had reason to feel both relieved and robbed. After three days of searching, they had finally found a gas cylinder. The price their distributor quoted stopped them in their tracks: Rs 2,500, nearly two-and-a-half times what they paid before. A war being fought thousands of kilometres away, in the deserts and straits of West Asia, had just arrived at their stall.
They are far from alone.
The blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical chokepoints for energy supply, has sent shockwaves rippling through India’s supply chains with a speed and intimacy that few anticipated. Tile factories in Gujarat have gone quiet. Restaurants across the country have shuttered or retreated to skeletal menus. And in the back lanes and food courts of Indian cities, a black market in cooking gas has quietly taken hold.
The price of a 14.2-kg domestic LPG cylinder in Delhi has climbed to Rs 913, up from Rs 853 – a rise of Rs 60 – while commercial cylinder prices have jumped by Rs 115 to Rs 1,884.50 (for a 19 kg cylinder). The Centre has sought to reassure households that no shortage is imminent, pointing to a 25% increase in domestic LPG production.
But for the restaurants, dhabas, and cloud kitchens that keep urban India fed, those assurances have done little to ease conditions on the ground.
For commercial establishments, cylinders are simply not arriving through official channels. The eateries The Indian Express spoke to said the black market is now the only viable route to procurement – at prices that are frequently more than double the regulated rate. For smaller scale operations, like the one the two friends run in Yusuf Sarai, they rely on domestic cylinders largely, and even those cylinders are being sold at a 100-150% premium. Though using domestic LPG for commercial operations is not legally permissible, many small-scale roadside eateries rely on them since they are cheaper than commercial LPG.
The refrain throughout the industry is the same: that there is currently a lack of clarity from the government.
Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum did not respond to requests for comment.
Kawaljeet Singh, co-founder of the food chain Khadak Singh Da Dhabha, which has over 70 outlets across 15 cities, said, “We are being told to pay 2-2.5 times the regulated cost of a commercial cylinder on average in Delhi-NCR. It is mostly available in the black market, as it is very difficult to get hold of a cylinder through the official route. In cities like Bengaluru, we have even been quoted prices ranging between Rs 8,000 and Rs 9,000 for a cylinder.”
This has forced Singh to shut down his eatery in Bengaluru. “The outlet there is running on its last cylinder, we don’t have a supply after that because prices are very high,” he said. In his remaining outlets, most have cut down on the menu and are serving four to five high demand dishes, he said. “We have also significantly reduced the discounts we offered on delivery platforms like Zomato and Swiggy to offset some of the costs.”
For Singh’s outlets, the daily cost of cylinders before the crisis used to be around Rs 30,000-Rs 50,000 a day. Today, it stands close to Rs 1 lakh, he told The Indian Express. Packaging costs, he said, have also shot up 20-25%, as plastic wraps have become more expensive, which has also led to an increase in prices of paper-based packaging material.
Restaurant owners across the country are reporting similar problems. Gagandeep Singh Sapra, who runs a number of cloud kitchen, primarily selling items on online food delivery platforms, wrote on social media platform X that one of his kitchen brands called Tadka Rani has been shut down due to a shortage in LPG, and several other of his brands are serving limited menus “till we can serve them”.
The National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), the sector’s key industry body, has advised its members to adopt fuel conservation and operational measures amid disruptions in the commercial LPG supply chain. The industry body said the ongoing geopolitical developments could further tighten availability, creating operational challenges for restaurants across the country, and if the situation persists, the food service sector “may face difficulties in sustaining kitchen operations”.
The effects have a long tail. Every restaurant that goes dark or reduces its offering means fewer orders flowing through the delivery ecosystem – and for the workers who depend on that ecosystem, the impact is immediate and personal.
A delivery worker in Delhi’s Vasant Kunj said he has received 20-25% less earnings than usual for the same hours of work in the last few days as order numbers seem to have depleted.
On Wednesday, The Indian Express reported that panic surrounding the fuel crisis has led to a surge in sales of induction cooktops, which Flipkart has said become a “survival necessity” instead of a simple “kitchen upgrade”. The e-tailer said that sales of induction cooktops have quadrupled in the last few days, with demand coming from cities like Delhi, Kolkata, and Uttar Pradesh. An Amazon spokesperson said that sales of induction cooktops have increased over 30 times, while sales of multi-use kettles have doubled. Meanwhile, rice cookers and electric pressure cookers have quadrupled in sales.
