Patna: Restaurants and hotels in the city are cutting gas consumption, shifting to chulhas and reviewing prices as higher LPG rates begin to affect daily operations. A commercial cylinder now costs Rs 3,381 and a 5kg cylinder is priced at Rs 928, adding to the pressure on businesses and small users.Dealers said business has slowed sharply for commercial and 5kg cylinders. A Kankarbagh-based distributor recorded zero sales over the last three days, despite selling 400 units of 5kg cylinders the previous month.Restaurant owners said the strain is immediate. Vinod Kumar, who runs two outlets on Boring Road, said, “Even though the availability of commercial cylinders is on paper, it is still not freely available. In two months, the price increased almost twofold. This is a big burden for hotel owners.”Vinod said his outlets, which require over 30 commercial cylinders a month, cater largely to students. “Boring Road is a student area and 75% of our customers are students. This price hike will impact them the most. Every penny counts for students, and their monthly budget will go haywire. We need to increase menu prices by 20%-25% to meet the increase, but we can’t increase it that much, or people will stop buying,” he said.To cope, he has shifted part of the cooking to traditional methods. “We have become well-adjusted to using chulhas. We are using them to fry and boil items that require more time. We have no other option but to stick to chulhas. We can increase menu prices by 5%-10%, but not more. We will have to shift to a dual mode,” he said.At Patliputra roundabout, Dheeraj Singh said the change has added “an extra burden of almost 25%, or nearly Rs 50,000 extra a month”. “Previously, two 19kg cylinders were required daily. Now we use one cylinder a day to increase sustenance. We are now making gravy on coal,” he said, adding customers will have to “share the burden”.Another restaurant owner said, “Commercial cylinders in the black market were available for Rs 3,500 till last month; now, legally they are available for almost Rs 3,400. It’s like the govt saw the maximum money one was willing to give and hiked the prices accordingly.”The impact has also reached smaller users. A student preparing for NEET said, “I will be returning home now. I won’t have to spend almost Rs 2,000 a month on 5kg cylinders, which would have been completely unaffordable in the long run.”
