Godrej Nature Basket opens in Delhi!

 

I've been so envious of my friends in Bombay for their easy access to Godrej Nature Basket stores, that I was very excited when they opened their first Delhi outlet 2 days ago.

With its lack of Quality Supermarkets, I felt compelled to drive all the way to Gurgaon for my one-stop shopping. I visited Godrej Nature Basketat Defence Colony yesterday, and came away impressed and elated that I now have some place nearby to pick up all my consumable kitchen needs.

The first outlet is located at D-15, Defence Colony (Between BP Petrol Pump & Def Col Flyover) Ph:+91-11-4669-8777 and they promise to open soon in M Block Market, GK II.

The Def Col store is split across 2 levels and is quite spacious for a store in this area. There are baked goods, cheese (imported), fresh vegetables, cold cuts, meat, ready to cook meat products and imported ingredients from across the world. The advantage of Godrej Nature Basket over my other favorite food store in Delhi, "Le Marche in DLF Promenade Mall" is that prices are much more reasonable and locally sourced ingredients cost almost the same as it would in the market, without the hassle of bargaining.

There are lots of shop assistants who are very helpful with bagging, tasting and carrying your groceries around the store (if this is what suits you, I prefer pushing my own trolley) without being over-pushy.

Since they had just opened a day before, they said that there would soon be more items in stock. The shop assistants encourage you to taste the cheese and cold cuts before buying. The fresh cold meats were really good and I did pick up, quite a few varieties. My favorite would be the spicy chorizo. Slices are cut while you wait to your desired thickness.

Plenty of Italian and South East Asian cooking ingredients are available across multiple brands and price points. They also deliver within a 3 km radius.

They stock Haagen Daaz and London Dairy ice cream too. The next time I visit, I will have to carry my insulated bag with me to bring home some ice creams.

I loved the cleanliness and layout of the store as much as I loved the range of products and brands. The air conditioning was working well and the whole experience was pleasurable.

The only 2 problems I faced were : billing was slow as the cashiers were double checking every bar code entry vs the result that popped up. I hope this is just an initial teething problem. The second problem is not really their fault, but because of compliance issues, they can only bag products in paper bags which are a pain in the b&!! to manage when buying in large quantities.