“Don’t waste your time here. Go home and enjoy,” says Allen Dipu with a smile, as he hands me a glass bottle of ice-cold Oreo vanilla milkshake from inside a tiny but tidy counter. He then quickly whips out a cherry-red straw that doesn’t feel so shiny and smooth. “You’ll take home plastic only if I offer you,” he says. It turns out the spiral-designed straws are made of paper.
Allen started the milkshakes bar Kuppi, located along the Pottakuzhy-Gowreesapattom road, with the purpose of “eschewing single-use plastic.” Kuppi, which whips up takeaway milkshakes in many flavours, offers the cold beverage in customised, theme-oriented 300 ml and 500 ml bottles that you can just take home.
Formerly working in the jewellery industry, Allen says he had long wanted to start “an innovative business” of his own. But he struck upon on the idea of a “plastic-free venture” after seeing a host of messages and videos in social media during the devastating floods that highlighted the man-made plastic menace. “I realised that all the plastic we used and callously threw away simply came back. That convinced me to take up an initiative that would be a statement against the use of plastic,” says the 35-year-old.
Kuppi’s Oreo vanilla milkshake
But he found it a challenge to hit upon a striking and marketable name. “My wife, Deepthi, and I brainstormed on it for several days and we came up with alternatives like ‘Once Upon a Bottle’, ‘Take Me Home’ etc... but I wasn’t really convinced. Those were sleepless times and one day, in the middle of the night, while jotting down possible names, the word ‘Kuppi’ struck a chord in me,” explains Allen.
Kuppi’s handy, airtight bottles, that take after the popular milk bottles of the Eighties, are sourced from a manufacturer in Uttar Pradesh. On bulk order, they are transported in trucks to a stockist at Coimbatore, before being ferried to a printing unit for brand and theme designing. “Since the focus is on the use of glass over plastic, I wanted the bottles in itself to be collectibles. Hence we introduced silhouette-illustrated seasonal themes,” Allen says.
Kuppi’s cricket edition bottles
The current and the third theme is a 2018 Cricket Edition, featuring a close-up of Virat Kohli on one side and the catchline ‘Taste the Kuppi Run by Run’ on the other. While the launch theme carried the slogan ‘You’re holding the most wanted – Change – Avoid plastic and save yourself’, the second one read ‘I am Nature’s best friend until you break me’. Allen says he's now working on bringing out a Deepavali-based design for the festival of lights. He says with a chuckle that once he places an order, he finds himself on pins and needles until the bottles reach him safely.
Paper straws
Allen keeps two varieties of biodegradable paper straws — of 8 mm and 10 mm diameters each — at Kuppi. While the bigger one is sourced from an Ernakulam-based supplier, Allen purchases the other from a stationery store near Attakulangara. Allen says ice cubes, water or additional sugar are a no-no, instead preferring to serve purely ice cream-based milkshakes shipped up from toned, full-cream milk with a bit of crushers and syrups for flavour. While Oreo vanilla wins hands down, more fancy flavours include jackfruit, kiwi, banoffee (a combo of banana and coffee) and bubblegum. Allen says he himself prepares the banoffee flavour by mixing banana crush, coffee decoction and coffee-flavoured ice cream, while syrup flavours are used for bubblegum and Irish cream varieties. For jackfruit milkshakes, he sources flavoured ice cream from distributors.
With the initiative catching on, Allen says he now plans to open another outlet near Technopark. A cool way to say no to plastic.
Price range: ₹99 to ₹180 per milkshake
