Impresario Handmade Restaurants, which runs popular dining formats such as Social and Smoke House Deli, has offered its hand of help to make life easier for the dabbawalas. It has partnered with the dabbawalas to service direct delivery of orders received on Impresario’s ordering platforms.
The pandemic and the lockdown in Mumbai have caused a massive upheaval in the lives of the city’s iconic dabbawalas. Along with the restaurant industry, the dabbawalas, too, have been left without jobs. That is primarily because a large majority of the population has been working from home. The dabbawalas were hit by the lockdown as demand for the tiffin carrying service went down drastically.
Impresario Handmade Restaurants, which runs popular dining formats such as Social and Smoke House Deli, has offered its hand of help to make life easier for the dabbawalas. It has partnered with the dabbawalas to service direct delivery of orders received on Impresario’s ordering platforms.
Ulhas Muke, President, Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Charity Trust, part of the Mumbai Dabbawala Association, was forthright when he said that the first lockdown was the toughest for Mumbai’s dabbawalas. “Although there are many restaurants and hotel chains in the city, we only catered office-goers at their workplace in the past. Now that work from home has become the norm, it’s important to go where the customer is. We’re delighted to partner with Impresario Handmade Restaurants to help customers get fresh and delicious food delivered at home,” he said.
In a statement, Impresario mentioned the reason for the tie-up.
“While restaurants have been devastated by the covid lockdowns and subsequent drop in revenue over the past year, Mumbai’s dabbawalas have been tragically out of jobs thanks to office closures and suspended railway travel, leading to tiffin services becoming a thing of the past. As the original backbones of Mumbai’s food delivery system, both entities have now come together to form a symbiotic partnership to empower and enable each other over the next few months.”
From now on, orders from its Social, Smoke House Deli, and Salt Water Cafe restaurants in the Lower Parel, Bandra (West), and BKC areas have been taken over by the dabbawalas. Riyaaz Amlani, Impresario Handmade Restaurants’ Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, pointed out the advantages of ordering directly and not through aggregators.
“Ordering directly from restaurants (and not through aggregators) empowers us to have direct and deeper relationships with our customers and saves on prohibitive commissions being paid out to them. We can pass these savings on to our customers and allow them to benefit from ordering directly. Now, ordering directly is also helping to employ our dabbawalas, who have lost their livelihoods due to the pandemic.”
Impresario is all set to launch a subscription-based meal service in Mumbai, delivering home-cooked meals starting at 6,000 per month. This will be available across Khar, Vikhroli, Versova, and Lower Parel during the first rollout phase on May 24, 2021. The dabbawalas will deliver the meals.
In the pilot project being run now, orders from Social, Smoke House Delhi, and Salt Water Cafe in Lower Parel, Bandra West, and BKC will be fulfilled by dabbawalas. The orders will be received via Impresario’s tech platforms. The city’s dabbawalas will be trained to use the app, the delivery protocols, and how to handle payments. Amlani hopes to scale up the format to include other restaurants across the city as well. “There are enough restaurants to keep all the dabbawalas busy,” said Amlani.
