Hot Meals From Home to Office​—Mumbai Style

YOU travel to work each day, leaving home as early as five o’clock in the morning. At lunchtime you would welcome a home-cooked meal spiced just the way you like it. For thousands who work in Mumbai, India, that is a reality, thanks to the dabbawalas, who deliver India’s home-cooked meals. *

Seeing an Opportunity

Toward the end of the 19th century, Mumbai, then called Bombay, was an expanding commercial center with both British and Indian businessmen traveling considerable distances to their offices. Transport was slow, and restaurants were few and far between. A home-cooked lunch was very desirable, so servants were employed to carry cooked lunches from their employer’s home to his office. Seeing a business opportunity, a farsighted entrepreneur brought in unemployed youths from villages and started a regular delivery service from homes to offices. From this small start, a booming business began.

The desire for home cooking has not diminished. Granted, there are more restaurants now, but home-cooked food is still economical and popular. Moreover, many people have health problems and need to adhere to a special diet. Others have religious restrictions. Some people, for example, abstain from onions, while others reject garlic. Many of these items are added to restaurant food, so home-to-office delivery eliminates dietary issues.

A Most Reliable Service

The relatively simple delivery system has changed little over the years, except in scale.  Nowadays, more than 5,000 men, as well as a few women, transport more than 200,000 lunches a day from homes in their own local area to offices scattered around this urban agglomeration of over 20 million people. Covering the area within a radius of about 40 miles (60 km), some dabbawalas walk​—perhaps transporting their 30 or 40 pails in handcarts—​while others use bicycles or suburban trains. Whatever the case, they make the right delivery to the right person and right on time. In fact, they are said to have an error rate of 1 in 6 million deliveries! How do they maintain such an outstanding record?

In 1956 the dabbawalas were registered as a charitable trust, with an executive committee and other officers. Groups of workers, along with a supervisor, function as separate entities. However, all are partners and shareholders in the organization​—and this, they claim, underpins the success of the service. In fact, they have had no strikes since the service began more than 100 years ago.

Dabbawalas carry an identity card and are easily recognized by their distinctive white shirt, loose pants, and white cap. If they fail to wear the cap, are late or absent without good reason, or are caught drinking alcohol on duty, they risk being fined.

 The Daily Routine

By 8:30 a.m., someone at a client’s home, perhaps the wife, has prepared and packed a meal in a lunch, or tiffin, pail​—a dabba. Dabbas have several compartments that fit on top of each other and are held together by metal clasps. The dabbawala collects several pails from an area, loads them onto his bicycle or cart, and proceeds quickly to the railway station, where he meets others in his group. There they sort the containers according to their destination, like postmen sorting mail.

Each pail has an alphanumeric color code showing the residential location where the food originates, the nearby railway, the destination station, the building name, and the floor number. Containers intended for each area are merged and loaded onto long wooden frames that hold up to 48 pails. When the train arrives, the containers are loaded into a special compartment next to the driver’s cabin. Then, when the train reaches a major hub station, the pails are sorted once again and taken to the destination station. There they are re-sorted for final delivery to the client by bicycle or handcart.

These modes of transport are not only efficient but also inexpensive. Moreover, the dabbawala does not get caught in traffic jams, since he pedals down side roads or between lines of cars. As a result, the food is delivered to the correct office by 12:30 p.m. Then, between 1:15 and 2:00 p.m., after the hard-working dabbawala has had his own lunch, he rounds up the empty pails, and they are returned to the owner’s home, where a family member washes them, making them ready for the next day. From beginning to end, the whole exercise is swift and efficient, like a relay race!

A Humble Service, Highly Praised

The excellent record of the dabbawalas has not gone unnoticed. Other organizations have analyzed the delivery system, in order to apply in other areas of business the lessons they have learned from them. Documentary films have been made about the dabbawalas. Forbes Global Magazine awarded them a Six Sigma certification in view of their near-perfect record. They have been mentioned in The Guinness Book of World Records and in case studies at Harvard Business School in the United States. The dabbawalas have even had visits from dignitaries, including a member of Britain’s royal family who was so impressed with their work that he invited some to his wedding in England.

Today dabbawalas use computers and mobile phones to take orders and keep accounts. But their mode of delivery remains the same. As lunchtime approaches, many hungry office workers in Mumbai are reassured to know that a warm home-cooked meal is about to arrive at their desk​—and not a minute late!

[Footnote]

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Loading “dabbas” onto a train for delivery

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A “dabba” has separate compartments that stack together for easy carrying and transport

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Many businesses have learned from the efficient delivery system of the “dabbawalas”