Ankita J Sharma
This article was published in
One of the visible food trends is the growth of the home food industry, a parallel movement in the food and beverage service industry. As the Pandemic made it impossible to dine-out, more and more people started either cooking themselves or relying on home food entrepreneurs for ready-made meals. Thus, has begun the Home Chef Revolution, a career opportunity for many a passionate and talented hobby cook.
They may be grandmothers and homemakers, working people who cook on holidays, hobby cooks and part-time food industry professionals. But, not all of them were able pursue their passion or monetize their cooking skills. As the Work-from-Home Culture became a necessity
and entire families were stuck at home, family-time and entertainment began to revolve around food.
The Pandemic ensured we all enjoy home cooked food and began to whip up restaurant grade delicacies at home. Many talented and passionate cooks had the time to practise old gourmet recipes or learn new ones. Homemade dips, seasonal jams, slow cooked dal and tea cakes were the center of conversation between everyone. Bakers found therapeutic feeling in kneading to eat the best cake. From hand-rolled pasta to making rich banana bread, home chefs discovered flavors from every corner of the world.
Following the Lockdown, the number of home chefs is on the rise everywhere. The closure of restaurants and shops meant people began to depend more and more on ordering from home chefs, home bakers and home-based entrepreneurs. Few passionate cooks have started home-based food enterprises because of the loss of a job or business as a way to keep home fires burning. Home chefs, food entrepreneurs, and home bakers are truly pushing boundaries and taking challenges from fresh perspectives of millenials. They work hard on meal plating and packinges, sourcing ingredients, weekend special menus and even serving the restaurant-style and excellent quality
on customers table. They are trying to shape the entire food and drink spectrum.
The growing popularity of home chefs is led by a trust factor among their patrons on the home cooked food they make, the hygiene and cleanliness of a household kitchen vis-à-vis a commercial kitchen, and the quality and authenticity of ingredients they source. Most home chefs specialise in a particular cuisine or even one specific dish. Families can enjoy cuisines not easily available in restaurants of most cities, like Kashmiri, Sindhi, Odia or Parsee. Homesick professionals are among the frequent customers of home chefs as they crave the comfort foods of their community or region but cannot make them because of lack of expertise, time or equipment. In a cosmopolitan city like Mumbai, for example, Gitika;s Pakghor dishes out culinary delights from the Seven Sisters of the North East like Assamese steamed fish in
bamboo stem or Nagaland’s pungent Axone, even something as exotic as Amlori Tup (weaver ant eggs) or silk worm, while Roxanne Bamboat, The Tiny Taster, a food and travel blogger started a delivery of Parsee dishes in Mumbai.
One of the advantages of a home-based food business is that age is just a number. Take Pinky Contractor in Ahmedabad making dhansak and chocolates at a ripe old age. Or the case of the 90-something Harbhajan Kaur in Chandigarh, who goes through the process of making besan
barfi for orders. She started her business after a conversation with with her youngest daughter, Raveena Suri about how life has been so far and if there is an unfulfilled desire. Her daughter suggested her to do what she’s been doing all her life happily, which is cooking, only this time let the the world taste her delicacies. It started off with one or two fortnightly pop-ups within Chandigarh. “My mother’s sweets sold over the counter instantly and she received so much of much love from her patrons,’’ says Suri, “thereafter, orders started pouring and we fulfilled them all from our hearts and our home kitchen,
The signature item by far has been the ‘Besan di Barfi’. “It is a recipe inherited by her from her father and dates back to at least 100 years old,’’ says Suri.
Chennai’s Sara Koshy participated in a club’s cooking competition where she was one of the winners. This started her career as a home baker says when her mother in law gifted her oven. She learnt baking from books and made unique breads like sunburst bread, olive onion bread,
lemon nutted loaf and many gourmet bakery delicacies.
Most home chefs start by capitalizing on the reputation they have earned among their friends, family and neighbours for their food. Facebook and Instagram have become important platforms for home chefs to post photographs and menus, building a craving for their food among friends and followers, and expanding their customer base. The apps on the phone are used to keep regular customers updated about seasonal and new offerings. Neetu Jalali Singla, who has filled the void in Bengaluru for quality Kashmiri food, sends menus for the weekend on Whatsapp to her customers. Since she has a clothing store, she only does food delivery on weekends. She also sells pantry products from Kashmir like walnuts, saffron, almonds, dry spice packs, saffron kahwa iced tea, and many more. “ Zafran is a brand I started in London where I provided a gamut of Kashmiri products like clothing, textiles, crafts, food, I designed lamps and clothing, doing fusion with Kashmiri embroideries with creative designs, and so forth. Keeping Zafran as a family of brands, I started The Supper CLUB by Zafran in London as a
venture where I would invite people home for a meal. Ever since Covid struck us last May, I started deliveries in Bengaluru. As a Home Chef in Bengaluru, I offer proper Kashmiri food but its more than that, its an experience. I label the food with description. I send out menus, and
She says the response is excellent. “ The crowd in Bengaluru is up for a change. They are ready to try different things. There is a well-travelled clientele that wants to try the food. The weather in this city is conducive to Kashmiri food. And I like to have a bit of Kashmir around me,’’ she explains, adding, “ I do lot of iced tea, for which I get ingredients from Jammu-and-Kashmir. Like I do the Kehwa, which is incredible. During the plum season in Kashmir, I make plum extract for the iced-tea, similarly I get apricots from Ladakh. My family and friends there gets me the best of ingredients from Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, it is about quality control,
quality checks and getting the best. The products should speak for themselves. I am glad the Bengaluru crowd has accepted what I have to sell’’. She has started a small organisation, which will be registered as an NGO, with women who do shelling of nuts, make kehwa packs,
and make products to be supplied to her.
She says that all home chefs should be as authentic as possible in the ingredients they use.“This does not mean we should not do some fusion. I love Turkish, Persian and Mediterraneanfood. There is a lot of connection with Kashmiri food, so I make these dishes with the Kashmiri food’’, she says, “but it is important to use the right ingredients. Do not try to cater to too many, instead give the best quality and experience. If you specialise in a particular cuisine, go deep into it and research all that you can about it. For example, red cockscomb flower is an ingredient and colourant for Roganjosh in Kashmir’’.
She is happy to be offering the Kashmiri experience in Bengaluru. “Kashmir is only remembered as a war place but it’s a beautiful place with a magical Kashmiri culture. Some people think of Kashmiri food as very spicy, but its very flavourful’’.
Many others have also been successful in filling gaps in the market. Jaipur’s Ratika and Richa Khetan bake sourdough breads and eggless macarons which are not easily available in the city. The duo started Cauldron Sisters in 2015, offering exotic food gift hampers but led them to start culinary workshops, food deliveries and then cafe consultancy. They do vegetarian food in Indian and international cuisines, bakes and desserts.
The lockdown in June 2020 also opened an opportunity for Himanshu Rathore from Pratap Bhawan Homestay to start his food venture. “I have lived in , Jaipur for decades and learnt cooking from my mother and maternal grandfather. Our food was always appreciated by in house guests and by guests who visited us for cooking classes, so when we opened our home kitchen for orders the response was overwhelming and slowly things have settled down so now we get regular orders, more orders for weekends. People also order our mutton & chicken pickles which we ship to most major cities’’.
Following the Pandemic, many restaurateurs and chefs have also decided to work from home. Take for example, Chef Joy's home kitchen, a venture by Joymalya Banerjee, the celebrated Bengali chef and owner of Bohemian in Kolkata known for modern Bengali cuisine. In Delhi, Chef Anahita Dhondy Bhandari of Soda Bottle Opener Wala started The Parsi Kitchen, a weekend meal delivery service that she runs with her mother, Nilufer Dhondy with Parsi and western food made with the expertise of a professional chef. In Ahmedabad, Chef Mario Cardozo who has worked in hotels and cruise ships also takes weekend orders. Kavita Purohit who had a tawa ice-cream and snacks eatery also shifted her operations to home, taking advice from FEA co-founder Dilip Thakkar.
Tanushree Bhowmik of ForkTales is known for reviving historical recipes at curated pop-ups she organises with her husband. She keeps the taste and flavours as authentic as possible while playing with enhancing the texture and changing the presentation. She says Indian sweets are so rich in history, and are most often linked to rituals and festivals. “This was something that came up repeatedly in my research ancient/mediaeval Indian food as well as in the research on mythological and social dimensions of food,,;’ she explains, “As I started making them, mostly to standardise old recipes and because my husband is a big sweet lover, I became enamoured by the inherent beauty that is present in creating desserts and sweets. One can work on them like working on a canvas. I also love the patience and intricacy that most desseets demand. It is all these that got me interested in desserts and sweets’’.
Chef Toshan Salgaonkar of Tangasseri, a delivery restaurant also in Pune, focusses on seasonability and sustainability, using many rural and lesser-known local produce in his food. He shares,“ lockdown changed pretty much a lot as we re-conceptualized our cooking methods and applied modern restaurant techniques which popularized them even more. Right from cooking everything on different kinds of woods to pairing foods with certain ingredients’’.
Heirloom recipes also find takers. Nicole Pereira offers the signature dishes of Ritz Hotel started by her Grandfather in 1936 at Ahmedabad. Manzilat Fatima, descended from the nawab of Awadh, makes heritage dishes of her ancestors on pre- order in Kolkata.
As the business grows, home chefs are getting more and more professional in their packaging, promotions and following regulations. Many are getting opportunities to host popups, cook for food festivals, teach at workshops and participate in shows. Social one-upmanship too demandsthat each party must have some exclusive dishes from home chefs.
The Food Festival of Women Chefs by FEA and Active Media at Gujarat Sports Club in Ahmedabad on 7th and 8th March 2020 brought many home chefs to the spotlight. As I was handling the social media of the event with its curator, FEA founder Anil Mulchandani, I got to meet many of them from single mothers who were running small businesses from home to some affluent hobby chefs. Some have been on Television Shows and some have been part of competitions. FEA created an incredible community of home chefs and brought global gastronomical trends in Ahmedabad. Many of these home-based food entrepreneurs realised for the first time the commercial viability of their business. This situation is set to change with the rising demand for home-cooked food and also creating unique culinary experiences through innovative recipes, improved packaging and aesthetically-pleasing presentation for customers.
After the pandemic, Anil Mulchandani curated a series of home chef led food festivals at The Green House, House of MG, following discussions with its owner Abhay Mangaldas, Turquoise Villa, The Fern Ahmedabad, Novotel Ahmedabad, Narayani Heritage, Grand Mercure GIFT City and Radisson Blu Ahmedabad. These festivals provided a platform to a number of home chefs specializing in different cuisine like Kutchi, Kathiawadi, Maratha, Konkani, Sindhi, Tamil, Chhattisgarhi, Odia, Bengali, Bihari, Jharkhandi, Marwari, Punjabi, etc.
The time is right for those who want to turn their love for cooking into a home-based business that can earn for them too.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ankita J Sharma
Ankita J Sharma studied journalism at NIMCJ and Integrated marketing communication at MICA, Ahmedabad. She works as a Social media coordinator for brands. She is co-editor of the IFEA magazine CULINARY ENTREPRENEURS.
