Working parents, nuclear families, demanding children, busy schedules … there’s nothing new in this trend that plays out in every city. Bengaluru is no exception to the rule, with startups and home-run businesses swooping in to lend a “helping hand”. This time, it’s in the kitchen, with lunch box services that provide nutritious and varied meals for schoolchildren.
The business model has been successful with parents increasingly relying on it. Take for instance Bengaluru mum Kavitha Bingera, who was finding it difficult to get a healthy lunch prepared early in the morning before her six-year-old daughter left for school. “Giving her a hot snack and lunch was one thing. The bigger issue was sending something different everyday,” she said. Then, she chanced upon a website that promised to solve all her problems. And solve it did. For the last two years, Ms. Bingera has been using the service of a startup called sCoolMeal Food Ventures, which delivers “hot and healthy” meals to her child at the school.
And it’s not the only one that’s gaining traction. In Bengaluru alone, there are at least six such services that have come up in recent times. In many cases, the idea of starting the venture came from parents themselves, who were struggling to get their children, often said to be “picky eaters”, to take to healthy food.
Monkeybox, a lunch box service that was started in January 2016 by Sanjay Rao and Sandeep K., has several takers. More than 80 schools in the city have signed up to the service and more than 5,000 children have meals that are planned meticulously by nutritionists and chefs. Mr. Rao says that what started with trials, now dishes out more than 2,000 meals each day. “Meal plans are in accordance with the Recommended Dietary Allowance. We don’t repeat the menu for 21 days,” he said.
sCoolMeal was started in 2016 by three friends who met during the Stanford Ignite programme. It was the result of the passion they shared for food. “Children spend 15 crucial years in school and what they eat during this time is very important. Of the three of us, two are parents and we realised the challenges of cooking healthy and tasty meals everyday,” said Kishore Acharya, who incubated the startup at the Central Food Technology Research Institute, Mysuru, with Bhavana Adarsha and Swaminath Trivady. With a kitchen spread over 6,000 sq. ft in BTM Layout, the startup sends 2,000 vegetarian meals, including breakfast and lunch, across seven schools, including Trio World School, Kumarans, Army Public School, among others in the city.
Like other caterers, Sai Happy Palate, which delivers to schools in the Sarjapur area, also has a nutritionist on board to plan the meals. “We meet once a month and set the menu,” said R. Punithavathi, who has been running the enterprise for the last few years. She started by delivering food to a playschool and daycare centre in her neighbourhood. “It was a natural move for us to deliver to schools in the neighbourhood,” she said, adding that food is prepared at their kitchen in Kannahalli and sent to around 40 students.
Cost
These modern avatars of the humble dabba service does not come cheap. On an average, these ventures charge in the range of ₹500 for a five-day sample meal to ₹3,000 depending on the plan.
While some of them offer shorter trial periods, most of the services have a 22-day plan in place.
