Women are highly underrepresented in the food and hospitality
industry. In India there are few women chefs at the top of the
hospitality industry ladder. This stems not just from lack of
opportunity but also social factors – families do not encourage girls
to take up a career in food and hospitality. Many home chefs also
complain of not getting encouragement from their spouse or family.
In order to offer women an opportunity to showcase their cooking
skills and start their own food business, we came up with the idea of
the Food Festival of Women Chefs. The idea of the festival is to offer
a platform for women who cook at home and want to start their own food
business as well as women who are already professional chefs or in the
food business. We discussed this concept with Asif Kadri of Active
Media during the Ahmedabad Food Festival that he organizes, which has
a section dedicated to women chefs. He had an idea of doing an event
featuring mompreneurs. Thus, we decided to plan the event for 7th and
8th March 2020, Woman’s Day. Sports Club of Gujarat agreed to be the
venue partner. State Bank of India was willing to sponsor the event.
The announcement of the event on social media got a heart-warming
response. Many women food entrepreneurs, including home chefs and home
bakers, came forward to book booths for the festival. Some women who
were not yet food entrepreneurs too decided to showcase their skills
and explore the possibility of turning their passion into a
profession. Each one was asked to list their specialties, based on
which the menu for each booth was decided – to the extent possible, we
wanted to ensure minimum or even no repeat of items. Women were also
encouraged to specialize in a cuisine that was their forte – this
helped in two ways – reducing rivalry between booths and, at the same
time, offering a vast variety of cuisine to those who attended the
festival.
Together with the food exhibition, we also organized talks and
workshops. At the beginning of the event, Dipika Chauhan (Dy
Commissioner, Food and Drug Control Authority, Gujarat) addressed the
women entrepreneurs, informing them about food safety and licensing
requirements for those entering the food business. Yashodhara Pande,
Lecturer, Institute of Hotel Management, Aditi Chand, Academic
Counselor, International Institute of Hotel Management, Chef Vrinda
Menon, Sous Chef, The Fern – An Ecotel Hotel, Ahmedabad, and Smruti
Purohit, Store Manager with an international chain, spoke on stage
about careers in food and hospitality. Jaya Sharma, Senior Lecturer,
Institute of Hotel Management, Bhagyashree Dabi, Research Scholar –
Tourism and Hospitality and Shikha Patel, owner of Luxury Mithai,
talked about food entrepreneurship for women. Pranav Joshi, owner of
Food Designer, spoke about the key points that women should keep in
mind before opening a café or restaurant.
The festival also featured workshops by professionals like
• Microgreens Masterclass by Preeti Kapassi\
• Party Food Without Cooking by Riddhi Patel, Corden Bleu trained
chef and owner of Le Artisan Boulangerie with
Kamini Patel, Founder of Kitchen Therapy and host of her own show on
India Food Network (IFN Veg)
• Cold Desserts Masterclass by Alka Khanna Bhandari and Kaninika
Mehta, baking professionals
The exhibitors – add profiles to each one.
Anita Joshi
Jayanthi Santosh Kumar
Dr Vidhi Patel
Pinky and Rupal Soni
Shaily Ashish Gupta
Deepa Jha
Sargam Thakkar
Pushti Sujit Kumar Chokshi
Dhara Mehta
Purvanjali Agarwal
Kavita Purohit
Riddhi Patel
Purvi Jhaveri
Raveena Gohil
Jyoti Kadecha
Sonal Mahurkar
Antara Baroah
Sujata Dehury
Mridu Parikh
Dolly Smita
Sonal Kellogg
Pratiksha Upadhyay
Vishakha Dave
Urvi Gajjar
Bhavana Srivastava
Moumita Bannerjee
Preeti Kapasi
Kinjal Gohil
Harshu Lalwani
Alka Bhandari
Hiral Kayasth
Pratiksha Shah
Niriha Bhuta
Farzana Kadri
Santosh Vyas
The Culinary Heritage Awards were given to women who have contributed to:
1. Empowerment of women farmers, women food entrepreneurs and cooks,
2. Culinary Heritage Tourism in Gujarat.
3. Recipe expertise and quality control in the food industry.
4. Promotion of traditional cuisine through literature,
journalism or social media.
5. Taking Gujarat’s cuisines to different states or shores.
