Mocha: Selling coffee or addiction?

The story is about a leading coffee outlet, which faces criminal action for mixing alcohol with coffee without the mandatory excise license.

CALL IT COFFEE revolution in India, or coffee addiction, but Mocha, one of India’s biggest coffee chains today faces criminal action. Reason: It has been found mixing alcoholic beverages with coffee and that too without obtaining the mandatory excise license for the same.

While tea is the traditional beverage of Northeast Asia and India, coffee has long been consumed in Southeast Asia. Kopi tubruk remains popular among ordinary Indonesians, but here at Mocha you get the feel of coffee from any part of the world under one roof. Its menu has it all and to say it in a few words a visit to Mocha is more of an experience.

While Mocha, India’s coffee chain for the ‘affluent few’ claims that it’s beyond just sipping coffee with an unforgettable ambience and finest coffees from all over the world, the Chandigarh police feels the other way and have booked the manager and managing directors of the local outlet, which happens to be one of the 13 outlets across the nation including those in the national capital of New Delhi and metropolitan city like Mumbai.

It is one place where you can choose your flavour of freshly roasted and ground American, African or Indian coffee and enjoy fruit-flavoured sheeshas from Egypt, but beyond coffee, what the city administration feels is addiction, that this café was promoting in the name of coffee.
The Chandigarh police during a last week raid on the coffee outlet in sector 26 here arrested its manager for possessing red and white wine without license. More rum and wine bottles have been recovered from the outlet.

The excise department officials said possession of country liquor or foreign liquor in any quantity is prohibited in a restaurant under the provisions. A menu card of the restaurant showing that certain preparations in the restaurant are being prepared and served after mixing alcoholic beverages in these preparations were also recovered and taken into possession during the inspection.

Chandigarh which is emerging as one of the most happening cities of India has recently taken to the popular way to drink coffee in Southeast Asia.

Here youngsters prefer mixtures of coffee, ice, chocolate or vanilla and milk blended together and then topped with whipped cream, and with city being also high on liquor consumption in the country, young generation had been thronging Mocha here, which had only opened early this year. There is also a rise in drunken brawls and drunken driving in the city, which the officials figures clearly reveal, after the city administration liberalised its excise policy, thus facilitating easy and cheap availability of liquor in city.