[Lifestyle] How the pandemic prompted home chefs to establish small businesses

[DuCkyBhaI]

 

During the lockdown, Mumbai-based entrepreneur Shaan Khanna noticed her fashion and networking WhatsApp chats were becoming dominated by food. Everyone was taking to their kitchens and selling their specialities. From everyday comfort foods like Sindhi Curry and Salli Chicken to niche items like pork pickle and peanut butter buns, home chefs were cooking it all. Khanna, who has a background in building networking platforms for emerging businesses, saw an opportunity to create a WhatsApp group specifically for home chefs selling their creations and people interested in buying them.

So in the summer of 2020, she created ‘Food Lovers,’ a WhatsApp chat for residents of Cuffe Parade and Colaba. Khanna herself began selling her father’s kebabs on the chat, while others offered sourdough bread, assorted dips and jars of sambhar. Now, at the beginning of 2021, there are five ‘Food Lovers’ WhatsApp chats with members from all over Mumbai.

We talk to people who embarked on culinary adventures during the lockdown about how they got their starts, how their small businesses evolved, and what the forecast is for home chefs in 2021.

When the pandemic hit, Samay Ved’s business of supplying manpower to airports ground to a halt. By June, Ved, who lives in Andheri, says, “I was tired of sitting all day. I got my idea for Roti Mania from a conversation I had with elderly people. They were having a tough time making chapatis for themselves since most of their house help had left. So my business started off supplying authentic, homemade whole wheat chapatis to senior citizens.” Gradually, families and young people also started ordering from Roti Mania and Ved began diversifying his offerings to include gluten-free flatbreads and theplas.

 

Ved’s story is a common one, of a young person using the lockdown to help their communities and find purpose. Another common story is of housewives entering the workforce for the first time. Toral Shah, a housewife from Andheri, began spending more time in the kitchen during the lockdown. Her family saw her potential and encouraged her to start Healthy Bites, a homemade mukhwas and energy bar business. “The response continues to surprise me,” says Shah, adding, “There is so much demand for personalized and safely delivered healthy snacks.”

While WhatsApp groups offered a marketplace of staple foods, snacks and authentic ghar ka khana, formally trained chefs also made inroads into the home chef ecosystem. Anisha Berlia, trained at the Culinary Institute of America and Le Cordon Bleu London, had always wanted to start a pastry business. “Lockdown gave me the time to apply my undivided attention to testing recipes, sourcing ingredients, and to convert our garage into a workspace,” says she. In June 2020, she launched The Sweet Life by Anisha, a business based out of Nariman Point specialising in Entremets, a complex French pastry