IPOH: With the Deepavali festivities less than two weeks away, sweets and snack shops in Buntong here are racing against time to meet the growing demand.
A. Roslin, 57, whose husband is a third-generation snacks shop owner, said their workers have been starting work earlier than usual since earlier this month to produce traditional items like muruku, laddu, achi muruku and chittu urundai.
“We’ve received more than 1,000 orders in the last two weeks.
“To keep up with the demand, our workers have to start three hours earlier than usual at 5am and work until 9pm,” she said when met.
“We don’t use machines and everything is handmade fresh daily. Our customers say they like our products because the taste is similar to those from India and are not overly sweet.”
Roslin said her shop has seen a significant 50% increase in sales this year compared to previous years.
She said that apart from Deepavali, their muruku and achi muruku are also popular for other festive occasions, including Hari Raya Aidilfitri and Chinese New Year.
“We have to restock our items every day as customers come in steadily throughout the festive month,” she said.
Similarly, C. Saraswathy, 79, co-owner of another business, continues to uphold her family’s legacy by making handmade muruku and achi muruku, a skill she learned from her father.
“These are my father’s recipes and people always say they’re very nice,” she said.
“I wake up at about 3am and spend about two and a half hours preparing more than 400 muruku pieces each day from scratch.”
At a separate snacks shop, S. Kirthen, who has been helping his father to man the premises, said their customers come from all over Malaysia, including Kuala Lumpur, Penang and as far as Johor Baru.
“People are coming here on both weekdays and weekends.
“Some of those from other states even ask us to keep the shop open late until 1am so that they can come over to buy from us,” said the 26-year-old.
