The crowd outside Metro Cash & Carry on Sunday evening. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Xavier and Elena Martin from Salt Lake had turned up at Metro Cash & Carry on Sunday evening planning to buy groceries. The middle-aged couple waited in the serpentine queue of over a thousand for over half an hour to enter the wholesale hub.

But they were shocked on reaching the first checkpoint outside the gates. The guards blocked their way as they were retail buyers, not retailers.

The Martins were unaware of the agreement between Metro Cash & Carry and the state government, which barred the German wholesale major from doing business with retail buyers.

Bona fide customers will have to get a card from the company after producing their trade licence.

“We were surprised. We had no idea that customers had to possess a card to gain entry. This is absurd. Our Sunday evening got marred,” said Xavier Martin, 41, a schoolteacher.

Like the Martins, most who had gathered outside the store were unaware of the curb — they had been lured by the news of almost every item under the sun being available cheap at the Bypass trade hub.

“Some retail customers are coming in but we have to turn them away. On an average, around 5,000 people with valid Metro Cash & Carry cards are entering the store every day,” said a spokesperson for the store.

Not just ignorance. The curiosity factor, too, is drawing crowds around the 100,000-sq-ft store, thrown open on December 4, slowing traffic to a crawl even on a weekend evening.

Bimal Basak, a state government employee from Lake Town, knew that he could not shop at Metro but still came with his 16-year-old son Bishesh.

“I came with my son just to see the gigantic outlet. But after around 40 minutes in the queue, we were told that we couldn’t even enter. It’s sad but rules are rules,” said Basak, as he stepped out of the queue.

“I have come to check out the prices and the best deals they are known to offer. I had visited one such store in Bangalore,” said Tarak Singh, a grocery store owner.

The 33-year-old trader from Park Circus emerged happy from the store which sells over 18,000 items — from tuna fish to chocolate sauce.

“It’s great that Calcutta has a store like this. I will come back and pick up some products,” said Singh before leaving the store, which attracted customers and curious onlookers till 10pm.

Taufiq Abbas, 21, a B.Com student from Ballygunge, dropped by around 8.30pm with his friends, mistaking the well-lit-up hub as a new hangout zone, much like their favourite City Centre.

“But we soon discovered that the store was only for business. We have nothing to do here… Let’s hope retailers buying goods cheap will pass on the benefits to us,” smiled Abbas, before heading for City Centre.

Metro Cash & Carry, the Indian arm of Metro AG, opened its first outlet in the city on Wednesday, nearly two months after it was granted the licence to sell farm commodities and other food items in Bengal. With an investment of Rs 140 crore, the store has created 350 jobs.