Taste My Mother’s Traditional Food at Our Bengali Love Cafe

Video Producer: Saradha Natarajan
Video Editor: Ashutosh Bhardwaj

I lost my job just before the COVID-19 lockdown last year. With no job in hand, I was very worried how we would manage the household. That's when my 65-year-old mother donned the chef’s hat and decided to make a living from it. We stepped into the food and beverage industry. With my mother Deepa Guha as head chef, we started the Bengali Food Cafe using the cloud kitchen concept on 15 January 2020.

“We started with zero investments and used ingredients that were easily available at home and basic equipment that everyone has in their kitchen. Today, we are well-established and have become a big restaurant.”

To start the home food catering service, we used the funds that we had and established the cafe. At the restaurant, we serve traditional Bengali food delicacies, we also provide freshly home-cooked food, which is then delivered by online partners.

We started with a small team of three, now our team consists of 80 women who work across the country from their homes. The cafe aims to hire women and provide employment to them.

“Our journey in this business has been very long. We have been through so many ups and downs. But today there are many people working with us.”

The Bengali Love Cafe is now branching out to become an online retail grocery store.

During the lockdown, the groceries and other raw materials were sold at high rates. It became difficult for the people to buy them. I decided to buy raw material on wholesale and sell it at a low rate. Expanding this idea, I ventured into an online grocery store named ‘Grocery on Wheels’.

My future plan is to start a trading company, which will help us bring the raw materials from Kolkata to Gurugram.

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