kolkata city malls clocked record footfall on christmas evening and did the bestever business surpassing the highest precovid yearend turnout while food and beverage outlets including food courts and restaurants raked in the moolah entertainment zones fashion and footwear also did brisk business as revellers indulged in impulse buyingbumper business during the christmas weekend has left mall managers and retailers grinning from eartoear if puja was the best in recent years christmas on sunday was the best ever they saidi havent seen such crowds on christmas ever people were just streaming in and out our food court sales on sunday were the highest ever in 14 years said south city mall vicepresident manmohan bagreethe mall the citys largest clocked a footfall of over 25 lakh on sunday this was its highest turnout on christmas day since it opened in 2008 on saturday 13 lakh people had walked into the mallwe had planned to walk and have dinner at park street but as social media feeds with images of park street came up we changed our destination to south city it was super crowded as well and most restaurants had over two hours waiting period the food court too was packed to capacity finally we grabbed some coffee and came out and had food from a small roadside eatery on prince anwar shah road however we had a lot of fun amidst all the crowd surge said avishikta sarkar who was at south city with two friendsat the two city centres too it was a record christmas turnout while city centre1 in salt lake saw 11 lakh people turn up city centre2 in new town clocked 74000 footfallpeople dont seem to want to wait till tomorrow we are expecting another record turnout on new years eve said ramesh pandey wholetime director of ambuja neotia that operates both the malls adding that the emerging covid situation in china and unfounded rumours of a possible lockdown in india also fuelled the desire to make the most of the yearend festivityeven at luxury mall quest where customers have been cautious after the pandemic and footfall figures are usually conservative and not like the other popular malls that cater to the mass clientele the weekend show was great with over 60000 turning up our footfall on christmas weekend was double the usual around this time of the year it is fantastic to see our patrons celebrate said mall vicepresident sanjeev mehraacropolis mall general manager k vijayan conceded the sudden influx of crowd on sunday evening proved a challenge while the mall was throbbing with around 40000 visitors by evening another 5000 turned up in a very brief period after a musical show in the adjoining gitanjali stadium concluded the fb outlets were absolutely packed he saidmani square which has a large catchment area comprising both north and east kolkata as well as salt lake clocked 33377 customers on sunday after the lows during the pandemic we are really rocking we could not have asked for