My life at home gives me absolute joy. There are some days when, as soon as you’ve finished cooking breakfast and cleaning up the kitchen, it’s time to start lunch, and by the time you’ve done that, you’re doing dinner and thinking, there has to be a menu we can order from.” Yet another novel and beautifully commonplace emotion worded by Julia Roberts. In a culture like India, where family conversations move from breakfast to lunch to dinner to breakfast, and everybody likes to draw on the warmth and waft of their cosy kitchens, this sentiment holds true.
With the intent of giving Indians a wholesome kitchen experience, German maker of kitchens Häcker set foot in the country a decade ago. The brand Häcker Küchen GmbH & Co. KG has been associated with the world’s finest kitchens for over seven decades, since 1898. At its sprawling 1,75,000 square meters manufacturing facility at Rödinghausen, Germany, the company has centralised its entire production. This move, together with the most sophisticated manufacturing processes comprising 92 per cent of computer aided automated production facility, has enabled Häcker to maintain the highest level of precision and quality. Häcker was brought to India by Kanu Kitchen Kulture in 2004, which was the sole dealer in India.
Some of its offerings that have been popular in India are the drawer systems that are powder coated in a stainless steel shade with LED lighting; a wiping channel inside makes them easy to care for. The cutlery trays come in variants of solid wood like walnut, Cornwall oak, and grey Acacia, and innovative storage space concepts with magically hidden draws that appear and reappear and simplify your work tremendously. The electrical devices that cannot be integrated are hidden behind a furniture front with a lift door, and the matching fronts allow the storage space above a device recess to be used in full and reduce horizontal joints. The tall units for appliances come in an array of colours and can be lifted upwards, which is specially designed for India, where people have smaller kitchens. In total, the brand offers a range of 163 different options in material surfaces, colours and styles available to choose from. The offer a variety of finishes-laminates, high gloss laminates, veneers, solid woods and lacquer paints in matt and high gloss surfaces. What’s more, the clients have the discretion to customise their shelves and cabinets. Today, Häcker has showrooms in Delhi, Jaipur, Ludhiana, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Kochi, Coimbatore and Chennai. By the end of this year, the company is also planning to set up showrooms in Pune, Indore, Thiruvananthapuram, Kolkata and other cities in the coming years.
The company has retained its German aesthetic and engineering DNA and has also managed to hack into Indian homes.