ONLY FOR MILK SHAKES
Keventers
Delhi’s food (read social) media has been all
a-twitter of late. The reason for this is the opening of Keventers, the
capital’s treasured milkshake mainstay, at Saket’s Select CityWalk in a hip new
format with an exhaustive range of products. Meanwhile, the Keventers in
Connaught Place has had its sign painted over and is changing its name.
Apparently it wasn’t actually the original Keventers of yore. Never able to
resist a good mystery, we explore and get you the news straight from the
horses, er, cow’s mouth.
It was in 1925 that Edward Keventers started his
eponymous dairy company, establishing farms in Aligarh, Delhi, Calcutta and
Darjeeling. Ram Krishna Dalmia acquired the Delhi plant, which was then located
on Sardar Patel Marg, in the 1940s, eventually setting up 48 distribution
outlets across the Capital, including the iconic one in Connaught Place. “There
was a wide range of dairy products, with everything from shakes to condensed
milk. In the 70s the government re-acquisitioned land in Chanakyapuri for the
diplomatic enclaves, leading to the shut-down of the farm. That, among other
reasons, led to the dissolution of the brand,” says Agastaya Mihir Dalmia, Ram
Krishna’s grandson.
Meanwhile, the Connaught Place franchisee had retained the
Keventers name, and served shakes, ice creams and more to generations of the
city’s eaterati.
Now, Dalmia, with partners Aman Arora and Sohrab
Sitaram, is now looking to resurrect Keventers in a new avatar and has set up
the “new old” Keventers in Saket. They asked the franchisee to change its name,
which they did, to Shake Square earlier this month. Owner Surender Pahuja says,
“Yes, we were asked to change the name because of trademark issues and so we
complied. But we promise our patrons the same standard of quality and products
they’ve come to love over the years”.
Dalmia and his partners have signed on for four
stores, including Saket and have set up a production unit in Delhi. “While we
will be retaining some of the old favourites of chocolate and kesar pista,
we’re coming out with Caramello and Mint Oreo Cumble flavours as well as other
products such as gelati, keeping in mind contemporary tastes,” says Arora.
Cheers to that. Or rather, slurp slurp.
Nice
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