Schools have re-opened and apart from just helping kids to dress up and get them to complete their homework, another challenge that mothers face is to pack interesting tiffin for them every day. Having faced similar ordeals everyday – Sangeeta Maheshwari and Sunita Maheshwari – came up with the idea of starting The Lunch Box, a caterer service where they supply homemade food to children in schools. While the duo take care of kitchen, Sangeeta’s husband Rajesh Maheshwari markets the brand.
“Convincing my three kids to eat their tiffins was tough. They would complain daily. If one would ask for rice, the second would ask for chapatti and the third one would refuse to eat both as food gets cold in tiffin. All mothers face these isses every morning. That is how we came up with this idea,” explains Rajesh. The start-up came into existence in February and currently supplies food to schools like Oxford Grammar School in Himayat Nagar, Brilliant Grammar High School and Fiitjee World of Schools, Narayanguda. While they are only serving lunch as of now, the start-up will soon start supplying breakfast too. They charge Rs 900 for students till Class V and Rs 1200 for children older than that.
The aim of the company is to serve hot and healthy food to the kids in school. Their menu, which consists of wide varieties of food, also encourages children to have it without making fuss. “We serve chappati and rice two days each in a week. To break the monotony, we serve some special dishes like pav bhaji or some paratha on the fifth day. It is accompanied by curry and salad,” informs the 43-year-old.
To make sure that the food is nutritious, they made the menu as per the advice of a nutritionist. “Taking responsibility of kids food is a challenging task. To make sure that their health is not affected, we roped in a nutritionist. She asked us to make sure that we include salad in the menu,” he says.
Without any experience in food industry, how did the trio ensure that their food would appeal to the kids’ taste? Rajesh says, “Our ethnicity as Rajasthani has helped us. We are known for the wide variety of food we serve,” With the help of two cooks, Sangeeta and Sunita have also started catering for offices and have plans to start serving dinner too.
