Surjana | photo credit: Noah Severino
Home delivery of food is probably one of the best things that technology has gifted us. Hyderabad based FoodHosts.in is one such platform that offers you food that you might not find in restaurants. Created by the city’s in-house chefs, cuisine varies from regional specialties and Mediterranean cuisine to Continental and American.
food by the kitchen table
Launched in March 2021 with 15 chefs, the idea was to connect a select range of independent artisan chefs with food lovers. Surjana Kanumuri, 29, founder of FoodHosts.in, says, “I want to give home cooks a platform to showcase their skills. Food aggregators offer almost similar cuisines. We are not only offering non-commercial food to diners but also empowering home cooks to become food entrepreneurs. We handle their operations while they work their magic in the kitchen. This has resulted in the discovery of many hidden gems amongst cooks and cuisines.
how to order
food by the kitchen table
From the platform’s browser page, you can select recipes from home chefs listed according to their specialties, mention your preferred delivery date (works on pre-orders) and make your payment. The platform takes care of the pickup and delivery from the chefs to the customer.
Pre-order is mandatory as the home chefs cook in small batches. Currently, there are around 30 home cooks on the platform.
entrepreneurial dreams
Patishapta from Chakraborty’s Kitchen
Home cook Urmi Chakraborty (Chakraborty’s Kitchen) says the platform has fulfilled her dream of becoming an entrepreneur. Even though the 58-year-old loves cooking and has been cooking for a select group of friends, she didn’t know how to approach the mass clientele. Urmi says, “This platform has helped me deliver food in Hyderabad and Secunderabad. More than business, it is the love from customers that makes me the most happy. I have customers for typical Bengali cuisine such as Machher Kalia, Patishapt, Kutch Kolar Kofta And spring casserole and a lot more.
Talking about starting Foodhost, Surjana says, “I was working in business marketing in Canada. Coming back to India in late 2020, I wanted to do something on my own and saw a void in the organized platform for home cooks. It took me a few months to identify home cooks and get them on board. The most important criteria for this was to enlist people who are not available in the commercial space and do small batch-cooking and remain professional,” she adds.
Drawbacks? Being home cooks, they usually have to deal with a limited number of orders. “We can’t force someone to scale because when they sign up, we don’t assure them that many daily orders. Also when they go on holidays, like other food aggregators we also mention ‘currently unusable’,” explains Srujana.
Every home cook has a name for their kitchen, some go by their own names.
Roshni and her husband Errol Nathan join the community in 2021 as ‘The Kitchen Table’. Roshni says that it is nice to receive the feedback and joy that people express through their messages on the platform. “Having worked in the F&B industry for over a decade, I always came across people who were looking for something special and different restaurants as they had to go by the menu. These restrictions have eased with platforms such as FoodHosts, which provides a range of non-commercial recipe options through home cooks. Nathan specializes in Goan, Mangalorean, Anglo-Indian and Continental cuisines.
Srujana says they are yet to reach the outskirts of the city where delivery services are still missing.