Kothiyans Dabbawala

We run a dabba service out of Pachalam in Ernakulam. Our place is on the Pattakuzhi Pachalam Cross Road. It’s a busy little area, and we spend most of our mornings getting the boxes ready. We don't have a fancy dining hall because we mostly send the food out to people at their offices or homes. It’s a lot of packing and sorting. We’ve been doing this in the 682012 area for a while now. The kitchen gets hot, and there is always a lot of chopping and cooking going on. We use the recipes we grew up with, nothing too experimental. Our delivery guys know the shortcuts around the cross road to make sure the food gets there on time. We don't do much in the way of advertising. Usually, someone tries our food and tells their neighbor or coworker. That’s how we've grown. It's just a small team of us. Sometimes things get a bit hectic if we have a lot of new orders at once. We just try to get the dabbas out the door. The containers are the simple stainless steel ones that everyone uses. We wash them, fill them, and send them out again the next day. It’s a routine that works for us. We are just local people making food for other local people who are too busy to cook. It's simple work but we take it seriously enough to keep it going every morning. No fancy branding, just meals.