I happened to visit one of meeting for fixing a price for a meal in a well known IT company...ITs not rocket science that we tried to explain... citing the inflation in cost, we were expecting a considerable hike in price .But it is a general tendency of cost cutting.
The corporate catering Business has seen several people close down recently and lots of Kitchen are up for sale though they have a considerable turnover...Let see the activity trap in an other context..to tell it shortly... initially with the IT boom, a number of additional services like catering ,cab service etc saw a great potential, lot of private players got in this segment but this lead to overcrowding and increase in competition and the margins were hit.With recession and inflation, selling price came down and cost price went up .the whole industry suffers.Hence , the industry is in the activity trap and hence is up for sale though the top line look good..
In an IT industry, its employees are it bigest assets and their welfare is of its primary concern...Considering their health being a primary concern, i think a balanced life and good food would be anyones priority...With long working hours, it stil raises the question of Balanaced life pending... Now we come to Good food....The budget for a employees meal per day is not even a dollar...With the prices of comodities shooting up, is it feasible to get one...how wud a caterer manage to do it? Dont know if any employee thinks abt this..Go to a juice counter and if u ask for a fresh fruit juice, you wud have to pay aprrox Rs 25.. but is the price for the meal that is fixed justified.....The lunch provider might be delivering food but how many caterers would use quality raw materials.Is it necessary to pay less for your daily fod and end up being sick and pay more later...
Corporate Catering works on huge numbers but with the current trend of increasing cost of raw materials, labour it is getting increasing difficult to survice with the current prices...
Health or Wealth...Before its too late, you need to set the priorities right..Otherwise with the current approach you are cost cutting your health...
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Habbadoota...read the customer's feedback
Below is an email of a customer who has a feedback for the recently held Sankranthi Habbadoota @ Hallimane. It is very nice to hear such recognition of our efforts from a happy customer. The person below has made the effort to collect the email Information and convey his wishes to our team even after 2 days of the festival. I did share it with my few friends ,they were happy and appreciated the fact that Mr.Nagendra Prasad had taken the effort to email us. At the end of the day, it is satisfying to read these mails.
I have posted a few feedback n Comment from my friends too..
Attn Mr. Srinivasa Rao,
I had oredered for one parcel of Habbadoota on Makara Sankranthi. All the items were very delicious and tasty. Thank you so much for the hygenic preparation.
What impressed me :--As i was collecting the parcel i witnessed the festivities being performed along with Nadaswaram being played. This is really incredible that you have this attitude of doing one's best worthy for the occassion. My congratulations to you and all of your team.
Kindly let me know of such future endeavours.
Also kindly let me know whether Appam with vegetable stew is prepared everyday? I would love to come to your place with my Family and friends in the near future.
Once again thanks and regards,
R. Nagendra Prasad
Basaveshwarnagar
Comment from a few friends
Sandeep K ( Computer Science Graduate from PESIT,Currently doing master in US.Allrounder in Cricket )
Sweet....Congrats maga...I am sure it must feel very satisfying to put in the hard work and get a good score :)
unlike cricket were the stupid umpire can ruin all your hard work and spoil the day.
Bharath K Raj (Computer Science Graduate from PESIT,Currently pursuing MBA in US,King of all Times)
you probably get tons of such emails...why have u sent this?
Divya KK (IBM Employee, my friend from PEROT Systems)
:) good..good
Suresh Bhagavatula ( Professor from IIMB)
This is exactly what Kiran (my wife) felt as well. She was very impressed with the fact that it was your parents leading the ceremony and that all of you had that inherent belief that festival has to be celebrated with the right kind of intention. I was mentioning it to Saras and others about the yakshagana project you had during the last habbadoota.
All of us really liked the morning we spent with you all. Thanks for inviting us.
Venkat Shyam ( Entrepreneur in Auto Service)
Ragi hi,Highly emotional mail!One such mail once in a while keeps us (service providers) going on for years.Kindly accept my hearty congratulations to you & your team. I am proud to know you.Hope to see ' IIM, Hallimane & habbadoota' a book by Raghavendra Sanjeev Rao very very soon.All the best
Nithin Maroli ( My Ex-Team Leader Perot Systems,Now in the US)
nice to see you are helping preserve tradition and culture.which is fast dissapearing. I was in fact shocked to hear from our offshore guys that sankranthi is no more a holiday but optional these days..
Lovely to hear all of these..
I have posted a few feedback n Comment from my friends too..
Attn Mr. Srinivasa Rao,
I had oredered for one parcel of Habbadoota on Makara Sankranthi. All the items were very delicious and tasty. Thank you so much for the hygenic preparation.
What impressed me :--As i was collecting the parcel i witnessed the festivities being performed along with Nadaswaram being played. This is really incredible that you have this attitude of doing one's best worthy for the occassion. My congratulations to you and all of your team.
Kindly let me know of such future endeavours.
Also kindly let me know whether Appam with vegetable stew is prepared everyday? I would love to come to your place with my Family and friends in the near future.
Once again thanks and regards,
R. Nagendra Prasad
Basaveshwarnagar
Comment from a few friends
Sandeep K ( Computer Science Graduate from PESIT,Currently doing master in US.Allrounder in Cricket )
Sweet....Congrats maga...I am sure it must feel very satisfying to put in the hard work and get a good score :)
unlike cricket were the stupid umpire can ruin all your hard work and spoil the day.
Bharath K Raj (Computer Science Graduate from PESIT,Currently pursuing MBA in US,King of all Times)
you probably get tons of such emails...why have u sent this?
Divya KK (IBM Employee, my friend from PEROT Systems)
:) good..good
Suresh Bhagavatula ( Professor from IIMB)
This is exactly what Kiran (my wife) felt as well. She was very impressed with the fact that it was your parents leading the ceremony and that all of you had that inherent belief that festival has to be celebrated with the right kind of intention. I was mentioning it to Saras and others about the yakshagana project you had during the last habbadoota.
All of us really liked the morning we spent with you all. Thanks for inviting us.
Venkat Shyam ( Entrepreneur in Auto Service)
Ragi hi,Highly emotional mail!One such mail once in a while keeps us (service providers) going on for years.Kindly accept my hearty congratulations to you & your team. I am proud to know you.Hope to see ' IIM, Hallimane & habbadoota' a book by Raghavendra Sanjeev Rao very very soon.All the best
Nithin Maroli ( My Ex-Team Leader Perot Systems,Now in the US)
nice to see you are helping preserve tradition and culture.which is fast dissapearing. I was in fact shocked to hear from our offshore guys that sankranthi is no more a holiday but optional these days..
Lovely to hear all of these..
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Sankranthi Habbadoota 2010... (1)
Sankranthi habbaoota : The Authentic Karnataka Food Festival for Makara sankranthi @ Hallimane
Date : 13th & 14th Jan 2010
Hallimane , following its tradition of celebrating festivals had organised the sixth traditional Sankranthi Habbadoota...Habbadoota .. or the festival food @ hallimane is a variety of food starting from the kosambri,palyas to a variety of rice, rasama sambar and some traditional sweets like holige halwas made from naturally available items (i.e without using artifitial flavour enhancers) served on a plantain leaf in a festive ambience and by waiters who are dressed for the occasions.... That is Habbadoota... a festive treat in one statement....prob add to that lots of crowd and some good music..
Preparations for habbadoota typically start abt 3 weeks before the festival....starts of with deciding the dates of the festival and the habbabdoota is served on 2 days.. one day before the festival and on the day of the festival...With the best of my knowledge... indian festival follow the lunar calendar and hence are not on the same day every year....
Next comes the planning of the menu... which mostly contains more than 30 Items and we try to make sure we add a few items which are very new and different.
We also want to make sure people are reminded abt the event happening and since it is a unique event tht is happening in the city , it creates a lot of interest and a lot of our media friends help us in creating the same with the people of bangalore...
With every festival, we are trying to create more seats to accomodate almost all people who come to hallimane without having to dissappoint people the festival day. So we try to make the best use of the available space and things are accordingly planned. Since we have this limitation in space thotugh it is a lot sufficient for a huge crowd and in order to reach a lot of audiences on different parts of the city. We also have a take away option for habbadoota...
Take aways ....In the initial few habbadootas, we dint have this option n a lot of old people who cudnt make it to hallimane posted a few request for take aways.. Taking these requests a little seriously, we started this plan of take aways... Demand for Take Aways was good but only after the first time did we realise that it is not an easy task to do it coz of a lot of constraints... Packing 30 + Items required a lot of packing material, labour and making sure every item was available in the meal pack ... even difficult.By the days and adding experience on to this.... now we have meal tray sealer with a meal tray of 8 pouches where we are now sure we get most of the items in these kind of boxes which makes it easy for the people to handle while packing as well as removing and eating them later ...
We have also wanted to make this a little convenient for those who would have to travel from a distance to collect this take away by adding more distribution points in the city where takeaways will be delivered to those who had booked it either at Hallimane or Ganesh Darshan or we also ahd the option of Online booking @ www.hallimane..com... This time , we had take aways points in Indiranagar,Jayanagar ,Malleshwaram & Vijayanagar....
A lot of press notes are released to all our meadia friends to cover our event and to create awareness abt this and we have been very thankfull to all of them for having done it everytime and we have also been trying some SMS and e-mail Marketing...
A couple of days before the habbadoota, everyones really charged up doing almost all action required to do... procurement of vegetables and coconut from kundapur because the vegetables that are grown in this part is very tasty... procurement of packing materials... co-ordinating with the media... answering all the queries of the customers who call to find out details...cleaning of the restaurant... decorating it with flowers ,leaves etc...packing of ellu bella ...duty raosted changed ... extra tables and chairs hired...required utensils procured ... guests ,friends , family and media invited...Hallimane is decked up and set for the festival...
Date : 13th & 14th Jan 2010
Hallimane , following its tradition of celebrating festivals had organised the sixth traditional Sankranthi Habbadoota...Habbadoota .. or the festival food @ hallimane is a variety of food starting from the kosambri,palyas to a variety of rice, rasama sambar and some traditional sweets like holige halwas made from naturally available items (i.e without using artifitial flavour enhancers) served on a plantain leaf in a festive ambience and by waiters who are dressed for the occasions.... That is Habbadoota... a festive treat in one statement....prob add to that lots of crowd and some good music..
Preparations for habbadoota typically start abt 3 weeks before the festival....starts of with deciding the dates of the festival and the habbabdoota is served on 2 days.. one day before the festival and on the day of the festival...With the best of my knowledge... indian festival follow the lunar calendar and hence are not on the same day every year....
Next comes the planning of the menu... which mostly contains more than 30 Items and we try to make sure we add a few items which are very new and different.
We also want to make sure people are reminded abt the event happening and since it is a unique event tht is happening in the city , it creates a lot of interest and a lot of our media friends help us in creating the same with the people of bangalore...
With every festival, we are trying to create more seats to accomodate almost all people who come to hallimane without having to dissappoint people the festival day. So we try to make the best use of the available space and things are accordingly planned. Since we have this limitation in space thotugh it is a lot sufficient for a huge crowd and in order to reach a lot of audiences on different parts of the city. We also have a take away option for habbadoota...
Take aways ....In the initial few habbadootas, we dint have this option n a lot of old people who cudnt make it to hallimane posted a few request for take aways.. Taking these requests a little seriously, we started this plan of take aways... Demand for Take Aways was good but only after the first time did we realise that it is not an easy task to do it coz of a lot of constraints... Packing 30 + Items required a lot of packing material, labour and making sure every item was available in the meal pack ... even difficult.By the days and adding experience on to this.... now we have meal tray sealer with a meal tray of 8 pouches where we are now sure we get most of the items in these kind of boxes which makes it easy for the people to handle while packing as well as removing and eating them later ...
We have also wanted to make this a little convenient for those who would have to travel from a distance to collect this take away by adding more distribution points in the city where takeaways will be delivered to those who had booked it either at Hallimane or Ganesh Darshan or we also ahd the option of Online booking @ www.hallimane..com... This time , we had take aways points in Indiranagar,Jayanagar ,Malleshwaram & Vijayanagar....
A lot of press notes are released to all our meadia friends to cover our event and to create awareness abt this and we have been very thankfull to all of them for having done it everytime and we have also been trying some SMS and e-mail Marketing...
A couple of days before the habbadoota, everyones really charged up doing almost all action required to do... procurement of vegetables and coconut from kundapur because the vegetables that are grown in this part is very tasty... procurement of packing materials... co-ordinating with the media... answering all the queries of the customers who call to find out details...cleaning of the restaurant... decorating it with flowers ,leaves etc...packing of ellu bella ...duty raosted changed ... extra tables and chairs hired...required utensils procured ... guests ,friends , family and media invited...Hallimane is decked up and set for the festival...
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