When the gas runs out

We have not received a commercial LPG cylinder delivery in seven days. Across Chennai, Tamil Nadu, and the rest of India, restaurants are in the same position. There is no gas to cook with.

What happened and why there's no gas

The ongoing US-Israel-Iran conflict has disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which 85–90% of India's LPG imports pass. India imports about 62% of its total LPG requirement, which makes any disruption in this corridor a serious problem. When hostilities escalated in late February 2026, LPG cargo shipments slowed to a trickle.

On March 9, the Indian government invoked the Essential Commodities Act, directing oil marketing companies to prioritise domestic (household) LPG supply over commercial customers. The logic is understandable: protect household cooking first. But for the lakhs of restaurants, hotels, cloud kitchens, and catering operations that run on commercial cylinders, the effect has been devastating.

In Chennai, our supplier HP Gas has had zero stock for over a week. Indane has some inventory by most accounts, but we are not Indane customers, and switching suppliers is currently not possible. The only option left for many operators is the informal refiller market (small operators who refill cylinders) or, as some businesses have resorted to, using subsidised domestic cylinders in commercial kitchens.

Commercial LPG prices had already risen by 20% through successive hikes in 2026 before the shortage even began. Now, with supply cut off, black market prices for a 19 kg commercial cylinder have surged from ₹1,800–1,900 to somewhere between ₹2,000 and ₹3,000. If you can find one at all.

Restaurants shutting down across India

The problem is national.

In Mumbai, about 20% of the city's 8,000 hotels and restaurants had shut down by March 10. The Hotel and Restaurant Association of Western India warned that 50% could follow within days if supply didn't resume. Bengaluru hotel owners' associations reported similar shutdowns and filed urgent representations with the state government. The Telangana Hotels Association in Hyderabad warned of mass closures if the situation persisted beyond another week. In Delhi-NCR, restaurants and cloud kitchens threatened a joint shutdown.

Even the big chains are not immune. KFC, Pizza Hut, and McDonald's outlets that depend on high-volume gas supply have been forced to close locations or cut menus to the bone where cylinders have run out. When a multinational franchise with deep pockets and established supply chains cannot secure gas, that should tell you something about how bad this shortage is.

The National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), through its President Sagar Daryani, described the situation as a "crisis" that would "lead to the closure of many restaurants." The NRAI's advisory to members was blunt: cut menus to dishes that use less gas, look into electric cooking, and conserve whatever fuel you have left.

In Tamil Nadu, M. Ravi, President of the Chennai Hotel Association, estimated that close to 10,000 establishments across the state could shut down. For the small restaurants that purchase cylinders daily, the neighbourhood biryani shops and tiffin centres and mess halls that feed working-class Chennai, even a two-day gap in supply means closing the shutters.

Prime Minister Modi addressed the crisis on March 10, stating that the "common man should not be impacted because of the US-Israel-Iran war." The sentiment is right, but for restaurant operators, the impact is already here.

Where we stand

Our restaurant has three commercial LPG cylinders in stock. At our normal rate of consumption, that is a few days of full operations. We have no confirmed delivery date for the next refill.

Our catering operation, which runs across multiple kitchen locations, has more cylinders spread across sites. A bit more runway, but for bulk cooking that serves large volumes each day, the buffer is thin.

We are adapting. When you run food businesses, that means rethinking how you apply heat to food.

How we are adapting

Here is what we are doing across both operations.

Moving everything possible to electric. We have a plancha (a flat electric griddle) that we used to use now and then. Now it runs all day. Three planchas across operations, handling work that used to go to gas burners. We are also buying induction stoves for specific tasks that can move off gas without hurting food quality. Sautéing, sauce reduction, boiling: anything that does not need an open flame is going to induction.

The home oven returns. Six years ago, when Bakeaholicks started in our home kitchen. The experiments, the first recipes, the trial batches and our initial deliveries all came out of one oven. That oven is back in production rotation as the main oven for this season.

Firewood for bulk cooking. For our large-volume catering, we have moved bulk cooking to firewood. When you need to cook rice, sambar, and curries in quantities that serve hundreds of people each day, and you have no gas, you go back to what worked for centuries. We are stocking firewood and have built a setup for the next couple of weeks. The trade-offs are there: more labour, more time, more smoke management, different heat control. But the food gets cooked.

Deploying the pasta boilers. We invested in electric pasta boilers a while back for kitchen efficiency. Those boilers are now out of storage and running. Every litre of water we can boil on electricity is a litre we do not need gas for.

Gas oven reserved for pizza only. Our gas oven now runs for one purpose: pizza. Pizza requires the heat profile that a gas oven provides, the high radiant heat, the stone temperature, the air circulation. We cannot replicate that on electric equipment without investing in a commercial electric pizza oven, which is not feasible right now. So the gas oven bakes pizza. Nothing else. Every other baking, roasting, and heating task has been moved to electric. We are rationing our remaining cylinders for the one application where gas is irreplaceable in our current setup.

Diesel generator topped up. We have filled our diesel generator to capacity to cover any electricity loss. If the power goes, we lose the electric equipment that we have just moved everything onto. That is not a risk we can take right now.

Exploring a revised menu. We are also looking at what changes we can make to the menu itself. Dishes that are less gas-dependent, preparations that work better on electric or with firewood, items we can add that play to the equipment we have available. The goal is a menu that makes sense for the way we are cooking now, not one that fights against it.

PNG: the longer-term fix

This crisis made something obvious that we should have acted on earlier. Our dependence on cylinder-based LPG is a single point of failure. One disruption to the Strait of Hormuz and our kitchens go dark.

We are exploring Piped Natural Gas (PNG) as a long-term alternative. It is continuous, cheaper per unit than commercial LPG, and you do not have to store cylinders on site. Chennai's PNG infrastructure has been expanding, and we are looking into feasibility and timelines for connecting our kitchens to the gas grid.

The next time shipping lanes close or geopolitics disrupts supply chains, our kitchens should not go silent again.

What we need

The government needs to establish a transparent allocation mechanism for commercial LPG that does not cut off commercial customers. Restaurants feed people too. The millions who eat at restaurants daily, the workers and students and families who depend on commercial kitchens being operational, did not stop needing to eat because of a war in the Middle East.

Oil marketing companies need to provide clear timelines. When will supply resume? What allocation can we expect? The uncertainty is as damaging as the shortage itself. We cannot plan, we cannot commit to catering contracts, and we cannot reassure our teams.

And cities like Chennai need to accelerate PNG infrastructure. This crisis should make it obvious to the hospitality industry and to urban planners that piped gas connectivity for commercial kitchens is not optional. It is basic infrastructure.

We keep cooking

The Iran war did not consult us before disrupting our gas supply, and the government did not consult us before redirecting LPG to households. We get it.

So we cook with planchas and induction stoves and pasta boilers and firewood and one old home oven that built a restaurant once. That is what we have. That is what we use. And to our guest, we bid "Welcome Home".