Dabbawallahs coming

Dabbawallahs coming
Plan To Open Shop In Bangalore Schools By June
The Times of India

Bangalore: Hungry kya? Wait. The Mumbai Dabbawallahs are all set to start their ‘fast food’ business in Bangalore. On Saturday, these white topiwallahs delivered some lunch time lessons to tiewallahs (the corporate wannabes) at the ICFAI business school seminar on ‘Impeccable logistics and supply chain management’.

To begin with, they want to step into schools. If all works well and the Mumbai Dabba force work out the modalities with the local ‘tiffinwallahs’ who supply lunch to various schools in the city, they could well be here by June, supplying home-made food to schoolchildren, on time with precision.

With their ‘hardware’ being a good public transport system and people’s desire to eat homemade food, once the Metro Rail is on track, these ‘management gurus’ hope to cover corporates and offices too.

“We have started operations in Pune schools also recently. Similarly, we can start our service for schoolchildren from June if the local tiffinwallas agree. Once the train service takes off in Bangalore, we can reach the corporates too. By then we can understand the city and its geography,’’ president of the tiffin box suppliers association Raghunath Medge told Sunday Times of India on Saturday.

“We have learnt it by living it and we cannot take up a service like that immediately for corporates because of the kind of infrastructure Bangalore has. Once a public transport system like a train is in place, we can start the delivery and pick-up service of food for the corporates. In fact the introduction of this kind of service will pull in thousands of unemployed, illiterate people,’’ Medge said.

As Bangalore’s growth goes the Mumbai way and business concentrations like Hosur Road, Sarjapur Road, ITPL, Chikpet pull skills from across the country, the option of South-Indian-meals-for all may not work well, they believe.

“Like Nariman Point, Bangalore also has islands of commercial areas. For how many days can people eat restaurant or canteen food? Most people do so because they don’t have the option of home-made food. We can provide the same to them,’’ said secretary Gangaram Talekar.