Eateries across Mumbai can be seen pulling down their shutters — for a few hours, a few days or longer — to carry out repairs, apply a fresh coat of paint, fix broken tiles or undertake deep cleaning.

The closures come as Maharashtra’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has sharply stepped up enforcement in the city, suspending licences and sharing photos and videos from the premises.

Vijay Shetty, president of the Indian Hotel & Restaurant Association (AHAR), said the intensity of the crackdown has pushed many of the association’s member restaurateurs into pre-emptive overhaul mode — renovating, retraining staff and hiring outside help to avoid risking a suspension.

“They are third-generation owners, their image has been built by their ancestors over decades,” Shetty said, referring to many of the association’s members. “FDA is not only suspending licences but also naming and shaming restaurants, which is causing significant financial loss as well as a lot of harm to the reputation they have built over the years. There is mental trauma alongside financial loss.”

AHAR has around 8,000 restaurant members associated with it in Mumbai alone. Shetty said most of them are mid-scale and/or budget eateries or standalone restaurants that rely on turnover-driven business, operate on low margins and struggle to find trained staff, who, he said, often prefer working at food courts.

Owners, said Shetty, are doing everything they can, from conducting repair work to giving staff FoSTaC (Food Safety Supervisor Training in Advance Catering) training, hiring former FDA and FSSAI employees to manage paperwork and bringing in private auditors.

“Right now, even the slightest violation is leading to suspension. At least 50 per cent of our members have done renovation work. People are partially shutting down their restaurants to get repair work done, or closing early to do work at night so they can continue running the business during the day,” he said. Earlier this week, the Hotel and Restaurant Association (Western India) also shared that it had trained and certified 4,018 hospitality professionals under the FoSTaC programme.

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Following recent renovations and an appeal, the Maharashtra FDA has revoked the temporary suspension of the 100-year-old Noor Mohammadi Hotel license, and the hotel officially reopened on Wednesday. Express Photo by Ganesh Shirsekar.

At a Kerala restaurant in Fort, staff are now cleaning the premises thrice a day, instead of twice as was the norm earlier. “We used to spend 15-20 minutes cleaning twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. Now, we also clean in the afternoon, after the lunch service. We have been told by the boss to ensure a deep cleaning, so the team is spending 45 minutes each time. This is also the monsoon period, so to keep flies away, we are using more phenyl and burning dhoop sticks,” said a staff member. The restaurant has also moved its wash basin slightly forward and clearly labelled it, among other changes made to the premises over the past month.

The pattern isn’t limited to private restaurants. An FDA official confirmed that government canteens have taken the same route. “When our team went to the MHRDA office on Monday to inspect their kitchen, we learnt that they had shut their canteen suo motu to carry out repair work,” the official said, adding that the canteen at the Mumbai Suburban District Collector’s premises in BKC, and another at Kalina University, had also been found shut.

Individual restaurants tell a similar story. In South Mumbai, Kala Ghoda’s roll joint Ayub’s pulled down its shutters for four days earlier this month — its first such closure since moving to Kala Ghoda in 2002, apart from during the Covid-19 pandemic — to fix a broken tile at the entrance and repaint the premises.

On Monday, Kalbadevi’s Shree Thaker Bhojanalay took to Instagram to say it was taking a short break to give “your favourite Thaker a little refresh… some repairs, a touch of paint and a few small improvements to keep our space looking as warm and welcoming as ever.”

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The post came days after K Rustom shut down and wrote on its shutter that it was closed “for renovation” — after the FDA had in fact conducted an overnight raid and suspended its licence. The similarity led many to assume Thaker’s closure was also linked to FDA action.

The FDA, accompanied by lawyers, inspected the Mantralaya canteen, including the kitchen, drinking water arrangements, cleanliness and overall hygiene on Friday. Express Photo by Ganesh Shirsekar,

The restaurant returned to Instagram on Wednesday to clarify: “We’ve seen some reports and comments suggesting that Shree Thaker Bhojanalay has been shut down due to hygiene or food-safety violations. This is not true. Our temporary closure is entirely for planned kitchen upgrades, repairs and some paint touch-ups. As the kitchen is being upgraded, we cannot continue regular operations during this work.”

“It’s a good thing that restaurants are finally waking up,” said another FDA official when asked about the trend. “One should really go into some of their kitchens and see things for themselves. Everybody promotes the restaurant but nobody bothers to check hygiene where food is being prepared.”