INDIA’S ₹10 TEMPTATION : The street-food economy

 

BIZ MASALA  |  SUNDAY SPECIALS

                  INDIA’S ₹10 TEMPTATION

The street-food economy: who really makes money from cheap food?

By Murthy ASR  |  Biz Masala

A street-food stall is a tiny enterprise operating in a very large urban economy. Hero image created for this Biz Masala story.

THE QUESTION BEHIND THE PRICE

A ₹10 plate looks like a bargain. It can also look like a business opportunity: sell 100 plates and the cash register records ₹1,000; sell 300 and the day’s sales become ₹3,000. But sales are not income, and turnover is not profit. The real story begins after ingredients, fuel, transport, waste, water, packaging, equipment, space, helpers and the vendor’s own labour are counted.

India’s street-food economy is often described through appetite and entrepreneurship. It should also be understood through unit economics: what one serving contributes, what a working day costs, and how much uncertainty a household absorbs when its income depends on weather, footfall, municipal rules and volatile input prices.

THE SCALE IS REAL — THE PRECISION IS NOT

A Shell Foundation-supported field programme published in March 2026 describes an estimated 10 million micro-food enterprises across India and reports following 760 vendors in Delhi and Bihar over three months in late 2025. That is an important indication of scale, but it is an estimate cited by a programme report—not a census of every street-food seller.

A May 2026 working paper from the International Growth Centre, based on street vendors in Patna, reports average daily sales of ₹2,985 and average daily profits of ₹619 in its sample. A separate 2025 study of street-food vendors in South Mumbai reports median daily earnings of ₹1,200 and median daily raw-material/fuel expenditure of ₹600. The studies use different places, samples and measures. They are useful evidence of variation, not interchangeable national averages.

Reported figures from two distinct studies. The studies’ definitions and samples differ; this is not a national comparison.

THE ₹10 PLATE: A TRANSPARENT WORKING MODEL

To expose the arithmetic, consider a deliberately simple scenario: 100 servings sold at ₹10 each. Gross sales are ₹1,000. The chart below assigns illustrative costs to ingredients and cooking fuel, consumables, operating friction and a labour allowance. These are assumptions for analysis, not a claim that every vendor has this cost structure.

Illustrative model only. Actual economics depend on product, portion size, procurement, location, waste, hours and whether family labour is counted.

In this scenario, ₹800 of the ₹1,000 is absorbed by the listed cost categories, leaving ₹200 before any omitted costs, debt repayment, equipment replacement, illness, days without sales or taxes that may apply. If a vendor sells only 60 servings, many costs do not fall proportionately. If sales rise to 180, the vendor may earn more—but only if capacity, spoilage, working hours and input costs remain manageable.

THE HIDDEN COST IS OFTEN THE OWNER

Small businesses can look profitable because the owner’s labour is treated as free. A vendor may prep food before dawn, travel to a vending location, cook through heat and smoke, serve customers, clean up, buy stock and repeat the cycle the next day. If the remaining cash is the household’s only income, the number must be interpreted as compensation for labour and risk—not automatically as return on invested capital.

The South Mumbai study reports wide dispersion: daily earnings ranged from ₹500 to ₹10,000, while raw-material and fuel spending ranged from ₹250 to ₹7,000. Its median values are far below its means, a reminder that a few high-volume operators can pull an average upward while many sellers operate at much smaller scale.

Street food sits inside a value chain: supplier terms, vending space, customer traffic, municipal services and digital platforms can all shape the margin.

THE CITY IS PART OF THE BUSINESS MODEL

Location is not merely a backdrop. A seller near offices, stations, schools or dense residential streets may benefit from repeat customers and footfall. Moving that seller to a formally designated site can improve sanitation or pedestrian access, but it can also destroy the network that made the business viable if customers do not follow. A 2026 IGC working paper on Patna argues that social, spatial and economic ties influence entry, pricing, labour and suppliers, and that relocation policies can fail when they ignore these embedded networks.

That does not mean every vending arrangement should remain untouched. Pedestrian safety, waste management, fire risk, food hygiene and fair access to public space are legitimate public concerns. The policy challenge is to improve these conditions without treating livelihood as a nuisance to be moved out of sight.

SAFETY, FORMALISATION AND THE COST OF COMPLIANCE

The regulatory picture is changing. In July 2026, the Union government said FSSAI had introduced deemed registration for street-food vendors already registered under the Street Vendors Act and exempted eligible street vendors and hawkers from FSSAI registration fees, including for five-year registration certificates. The same release reported more than 74.33 lakh active food-business licences and registrations overall as of 30 June 2026. That total covers food businesses broadly; it is not a count of street-food vendors.

Formalisation can bring access to credit, training, safer practices and recognition. It works best when the process is intelligible, low-cost in practice, locally accessible and coordinated across agencies. A free central registration does not by itself remove the cost of vending space, water, storage, waste collection, transport or lost working hours.

WHO CAPTURES THE VALUE?

Participant	What they contribute	What can squeeze the margin
Supplier / wholesaler	Ingredients, fuel, packaging, sometimes credit	Price volatility, minimum quantities, credit terms
Vendor / household	Skill, time, equipment, working capital, customer trust	Waste, illness, long hours, uneven footfall, equipment failure
Land / vending-space holder	Access to a high-footfall location	Rent or informal charges; risk of eviction or relocation
City authorities	Public space, waste and sanitation systems, safety rules	Fragmented permissions, unclear enforcement, inadequate infrastructure
Customer / platform	Demand, repeat business, discovery and convenience	Price sensitivity, commissions or delivery costs where platforms are used

 

WHAT THE EVIDENCE DOES — AND DOES NOT — SAY

It supports three conclusions. First, street food is a meaningful livelihood and service economy, not a decorative feature of city life. Second, turnover can be substantial while the residual available to a household remains modest and volatile. Third, policy that focuses only on removing vendors or only on celebrating entrepreneurship misses the economics of space, infrastructure, health and labour.

It does not support a single nationwide profit figure for a ₹10 serving. The available studies are local and use different definitions. Nor does it prove that every vendor is poor, every relocation fails, or every formalisation measure is harmful. Those questions require representative data and careful comparisons.

BIZ MASALA VIEW | THE BOTTOM LINE

The ₹10 plate is not just cheap food. It is a compact lesson in India’s urban economy: a customer sees a price, a vendor manages a production system, and a city decides how much infrastructure and space that system receives. The right question is not whether street food is profitable in the abstract. It is whether a vendor can earn a dignified, repeatable livelihood after paying the full cost of doing business—and whether public policy helps that happen without compromising safety or access to public space.

A sensible policy scorecard would track net earnings after valuing labour, volatility across good and bad days, vendor survival after relocation, access to clean water and waste collection, food-safety outcomes, and time spent on compliance. Count the plates, certainly. But count the costs—and the hours—too.

REPORTING NOTE & METHODOLOGY

This is a desk-based analytical feature. It combines published research and official policy statements with a clearly labelled illustrative unit-economics model. The ₹1,000/100-serving scenario is not a survey result and should not be read as a typical vendor’s accounts. Local studies are presented with their own geography and definitions; no national estimate of average street-vendor profit is inferred.

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

1.       1. Shell Foundation (18 March 2026), “From flame to plug: what India’s micro-food vendors tell us about the commercial future of clean cooking.” https://shellfoundation.org/learning-report/from-flame-to-plug-what-indias-micro-food-vendors-tell-us-about-the-commercial-future-of-clean-cooking/

2.       2. International Growth Centre (19 May 2026), “Embedded livelihoods: The structure of street vending markets in India.” https://www.theigc.org/publications/embedded-livelihoods-structure-street-vending-markets-india

3.       3. Jain & Singh, IGC working paper (2026), income and earnings section, Patna vendor sample. https://www.theigc.org/sites/default/files/2026-05/Jain-Singh-Working-Paper-March-2026.pdf

4.       4. “Survival to Dignity? The Precarious Livelihood of Street Food Vendors in South Mumbai and Their Path Toward Decent Work,” Social Sciences (2025). https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/14/12/692

5.       5. Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (28 July 2026), “Steps taken for Licensing Compliance and Formalisation of Small Food Vendors.” https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2290625&lang=1&reg=3

6.       6. Government of India, Economic Survey 2025–26, chapter discussion of informal urban workforce and PM SVANidhi. https://www.eoiparis.gov.in/pdf/economic_survey_2025_26pdf.pdf

EDITORIAL CAVEAT

The reported figures are attributed to their respective sources. The illustrative model is constructed for this article and is not observed vendor data. Regulatory status and local vending rules can differ by state and municipality. This feature is not a food-safety certification or investment recommendation.

BIZ MASALA | THE BOTTOM LINE

— Murthy ASR

BIZ MASALA

Business. Economics. The forces behind the numbers.

Brand signature at the end of the story. The original uploaded logo asset was not available in this working session, so this is a clean typographic signature rather than a recreation of the official logo.