Being a tech company, specially one that likes to compare itself to Google, there is always this pressure of delivering on the “free food” promise. Before we had our own kitchen, many folks in the office were ordering food from Swiggy. Around lunch time, packages used to line up from rolls to sandwiches. There was everything from junk food to gourmet meals - the early days of cloud kitchen were quite exciting. One sad thing about ordering food was the amount of packaging waste that used to come with it. At the end of every meal, the trash bin used to be up to the brim. So one fine day, sometime in 2019, Prakashji and I were having a chat and we thought, why not cook food in the office. Mostly junk food was being ordered which was not good for the health of the team. The team size was also increasing and we had just rented another unit in the building. It seemed a good time to hire a cook.
Prakashji’s nephew Dinesh was looking for a job and Prakashji suggested that he can join us as a cook. When I met Dinesh for the first time, he was quite shy (and still is). Being a cook was not something he was looking forward to become, but sometimes opportunity shows up in different ways. The idea was to cook very simple meals. The kitchen was tiny and we could not use gas for cooking the food, so the meals had to be essentially “one-pot” with generous salads on the side. Along with rice meals that are easiest for simple meals, Dinesh tried to be creative with dishes like pav-bhaji, sandwiches, misal pav as well. Paneer pulav was the group favourite.
The immediate effect of this was a big rise in office attendance. People loved the idea of eating together as well. Just when things were going well, all of this came to an abrupt end with COVID. Sadly we had to shut down our office and so our kitchen. The good thing about this was Dinesh got himself what he wanted to become, an accountant just like his uncle.
Fast forward a year and half, we restarted the office, and it felt like a no-brainer to restart the kitchen. We like people picking their own work, so asking Dinesh to go back to cooking was something that he would not have preferred (though he does cook on some days). As we were grappling with what to do, my dad suggested to try out Pujariji, who used to be his driver, as a cook. I was annoyed at this suggestion because partially I don’t like my dad interfering in my business I and wasn’t sure how well he could cook. Having no other option, we did a try-out. And to everyone’s surprise, he turned out to be an amazing cook.
Lunch time at Frappe is where everyone comes together. The atmosphere is more like a cafe with the loud noise of happy people. Someone visiting our office commented to me that “I see you have managed to keep things casual”. We also try to keep things simple and egalitarian. There is no “cleaner” or person to clean the dishes. We all do our dishes if there are few people and we have a dishwasher to take up the load if there are more. Visitors always have something to say about the food - they usually love it. The icing on the cake was that our quality auditor gave us few extra points for providing healthy and hygienic food for all employees. Ambrish, our external trainer, never forgets to mention that he loves coming to Frappe because of the food.
After food, a bunch of us take a stroll to the nearby dairy shop for chhaas (buttermilk), with the double aim of taking a walk and doing more chit-chat. Most people think our best ideas happen over the chhaas break. Eating is such a primary activity for humans and fulfills one of the most fundamental needs - energy. Maybe trusting people who share your food has been hard-wired in our biology. Most companies I know don’t provide food for their employees. While I don’t think it is important to have five cuisines and Michelin star chefs like Google, but providing good and healthy food for the team seems like a minimum investment, not just tech, but every company should make.
