My Place
Curry hurried
By
Stephen Colquitt : 01-Jan-2008
If you get up early enough, you might see a bleary-eyed paper boy huffing around the suburbs, but it's not likely because most morning papers are now delivered by car. Even your mail arrives perfumed by the smell of four-stroke exhaust, and about the only thing you see arrive by bike in Australia are documents rushed from one office block to another in the car-choked cities. You certainly don't expect your local pizza delivery guy to turn up with a large Hawaiian and a bottle of soft drink on his 10-speed.
But that might change. Visitors to India have long been amazed by the army of "dabbawala" that descend on Indian cities every day. Carrying a four or five-part lunch in towers of small containers, the dabbawala carry their "tiffin" - light lunch - from home kitchens to offices all over the cities. In the afternoons they collect the containers and return them to the kitchens for the next day.
It's an amazing sight and I was suprised during a recent lunch break in Melbourne when I was passed by a modified three-wheeled bike advertising curry lunches delivered to your office for just $6. As the innovative caterer pedalled by, he left a delicious aroma of Indian curry in his wake. Intrigued by the unusual bike he was riding and being guided by my stomach, I took down his number.
Mikhil and Maddy Kotak are brothers who recently started the Melbourne-based company "Tiffins". Both worked as dabbawala and delivered their tiffins by bike in Mumbai before they immigrated to Australia to study at university. Seizing on Australia's love of Indian food and using their dabbawala knowledge and experience, they recognised the opportunity to start a business delivering Indian meals to office workers in Melbourne. Tiffins has taken off since its inception just 10 months ago and they now deliver up to 250 meals a day to workers around the CBD.
The Tiffins mantra is to serve cheap, nutritious and authentic Indian meals. As their business model is based on offering a hassle-free delivery service to the work place, frequent drop-offs to office buildings throughout the traffic-choked CBD posed a real problem. The use of bikes to deliver the tasty packages is integral to the Tiffins business. By delivering by bike, the riders can ride straight up to the front door, or in some buildings, into the goods elevator and deliver to the required floor without worrying about Melbourne's eagle-eyed parking inspectors.
The three-wheeled Christiania bikes used by Tiffins are imported from Denmark by PSBikes.com.au. The cargo box on the front enables riders to carry up to 100kg of cargo. Similar bikes are used by some Danish postal workers to deliver mail, but Tiffins have added insulation to keep their meals warm and they can carry up to 50 tiffin containers. With four bikes on the road at present, Tiffins have plans to increase their fleet to keep up with demand, and they even have plans to expand the business interstate in a few years.
The original Indian recipes are changed daily to take advantage of fresh and seasonal local ingredients. The chef prepares the curries in a commercial kitchen at Docklands and customers are provided with a choice of both meat and vegetarian options. The tiffins are served in a cleverly designed insulated container that can keep the contents warm for a number of hours. The container consists of four chambers, with each one connected to the other in a compact unit. Each chamber contains a different item consisting of a curry, a dal, steamed basmati rice and roti bread. Following your meal, the Tiffins team collect the containers to be washed and reused for the next days' meals.
Mikhil also explained that Tiffins are keen to reduce their environmental footprint and use green energy to power their kitchen. When this is coupled with their choice to use bikes to deliver their meals and to recycle their serving containers, Tiffins are showing their commitment to adopting environmentally sustainable business practices. And for those people wondering about the food, let's just say that after subjecting myself to a few taste tests in recent weeks, I will be going back from seconds.
More information http://www.tiffins.com.au/ (or phone 1300 TIFFINS) http://www.psbikes.com.au/