Dhruti Ahir remembers learning to cook her favourite dish, the carrot-based dessert gajar ka halwa, from her mother when she was young.
“My mum was cooking for my father, and I was in the kitchen — I was there for the eating only,” she says.
“But I just loved the smell of the dish, so my mother said, ‘I will teach you the recipe’.”
These days Ms Ahir cooks up to 25 servings of gajar ka halwa at once, as part of the Launceston-based tiffin service she and her husband Jay began two months ago.
The new business is a modern iteration of a more than 130-year-old home-cooked food delivery system that originated in Mumbai, India.
Still in operation today, the system employs more than 5,000 dabbawalas, or lunchbox delivery people, who transport more than 200,000 home-cooked meals to workplaces across the city every day.
Mr Ahir says his small-scale take on the traditional tiffin service has been well received by the Launceston community, particularly by Indians missing the flavours of home.
“The most common feedback we are getting is, ‘You made us remember the homeland,'” he says.
“And that’s where we feel proud.”
Home-cooked food for the busy
It was Ms Ahir’s love of cooking that inspired the couple to begin the business.
“I said to my husband, ‘I love cooking.’ That’s why I want to start this business [and] he said, ‘If you want, I can support you in this.'”
Mr Ahir, who takes care of marketing and customer relations for the business, explains the fundamentals of a tiffin service.
“Basically a tiffin service is … [the provision of] healthy, home-cooked food at cost-effective rates,” he says.
In Launceston, as in other places, the service is most popular with students and time-poor professionals, Mr Ahir explains.
“There are many people shifting here from the mainland, and generally people are busy,” he says.
“For example, a couple shifting from Melbourne to Launceston, or India to Launceston, both of them would [typically] be working.
“So it’s pretty difficult for them to cook twice a day because typically we Indians would have two full meals each day.”
New take on old-school tiffin service
Tiffin services, in a variety of forms, are now available in many cities across India, and in Australia they exist in some mainland cities, including Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne.
But Mr Ahir believes his tiffin service is one of the first in Tasmania.
He says that unlike the traditional system it is modelled on, his new small business makes good use of modern technology.
“Definitely technology helps us … [particularly in] communicating with our customers.”
For that, Mr Ahir uses WhatsApp, and for social media-based marketing, including advertising new offers, he uses Facebook and Instagram.
Customers order their meals via WhatsApp, and the business currently receives 20–25 orders per weekday and 30–35 per weekend evening, Mr Ahir says.
“Monday to Friday, we’re trying to have healthy food, like roti, paratha, or naan with the curries,” he says.
On Saturdays they offer “a special street food”, and the menu is rotated on a fortnightly basis.
Authentic flavours of home
Mr Ahir says while he and his brother Surjeet often help with food preparation, the kitchen is really Ms Ahir’s domain.
“Druthi is the heart of the business, she’s the main cook,” he says.
Ms Ahir, who draws on culinary skills she was taught by both her mother and mother-in-law, says her enjoyment of cooking means it never feels like work.
“As I see it, I love to cook, so it’s a task I enjoy every time.”
She says preparing meals with the exact flavours they have back home in India is critical.
“Some [ingredients] I need to get from India … my in-laws will courier them to me.
“[For example] fennel seeds you can easily get here, but in India the smell of the fennel seeds is very good.”
Her efforts to source authentically Indian ingredients matter to the people who eat her food.
They mostly say the food reminds them of eating home-cooked meals in India, Ms Ahir says.
“They give responses like, ‘It is very delicious food for us’, so that’s great for me.”
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Indian Cultural Society of Tasmania secretary Satendra Bhola says eating authentic Indian food is very important for many Indian migrants.
He says the first generation of migrants in particular have “very fond memories” of the food they used to eat back in India.
Eating such food also “gives them a sense of bonding and connection: with home”.
Mr Bhola refers to an expression: the love you show is through food only.
He emphasises the importance of demonstrating caring and hospitality through food in Indian culture.
The idea is applicable both to food eaten at home, and home-cooked food that travels away from the home in a tiffin, he says.
“Connection of home travels through the tiffin food.”
Getting out around town
Mr Ahir agrees “it feels good” to get positive feedback from customers.
“A business is a business, but at the same time we are trying to make sure … that we are also giving something to society,” he says.
“That’s how I’m planning to manage [things] going ahead.”
He says he wants the business, which also offers catering at events with up to 200 people, to have a food stall at every upcoming cultural event in Launceston.
“We are trying various things to reach as many people with our food as possible,” he says.