Tiffin delivery services flourish | Vancouver Sun

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In Metro Vancouver, the key to beating inflation, staying well-fed and feeling culturally connected might just a tiffin arriving at your doorstep.

Tiffin service, which has a storied history in India, is an affordable alternative to grocery stores and has a distinct advantage over subscription meal kits: You don’t need to cook a thing.

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In Mumbai, 200,000 dabbas, or metal lunch boxes, are delivered every day by dabbawalas wearing a traditional white uniform and Gandhi cap. They pick up the three-tier containers from home kitchens, and deliver them throughout the city using an efficient network connecting families and home-cooked food.

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Think DoorDash, but cooler, one fan of the dabbawala tradition noted on social media.

If you subscribe to one of the Lower Mainland’s tiffin services, your daily “tiffin box” will most likely come in a paper bag, but just like in India it will be loaded with homestyle curries, cardamom-scented rice, fresh roti, naan or paratha, and maybe dal and raita — at prices ranging from $7 to $12 a meal.

Gary Sidhu, who runs a bustling tiffin service from his Gastown Indian fusion restaurant, Silk Lounge, estimates there are 20,000 tiffins going out every day in the Lower Mainland from various providers, some from cottage industries, others from professional kitchens like his.

Although nowhere near the 200,000 meals Mumbai’s dabbawalas deliver in that city every day, it’s a significant number.

Sidhu offers tiffins in returnable metal containers, but most clients prefer the recyclable option.

“It’s just too much work for most people to rinse and clean them before returning them,” said Sidhu, who sends out 500 to 600 tiffin deliveries daily in downtown Vancouver.

Like most tiffin services, delivery is included in the price — it’s no wonder tiffin service has become a full-blown trend in the Lower Mainland.

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Sidhu also delivers to a large number of students. He was a student in India, away from his family’s farm for the first time and missing the meals his mother and grandmother prepared, when he started cooking for others.

“My father was growing the vegetables. I would help him bring vegetables to market at 5 a.m., go to college and then cook for my friends in the college kitchen,” said Sidhu.

Today, his tiffin service specializes in healthy homestyle Indian food, as well as “fusion” menus (think lamb biryani one day, grilled salmon the next), keto or vegan.

“Food that tastes like home is a basic need,” said Ken Dhillon, president of the South Asian Business Association.

He notes that new immigrants and students often don’t have adequate cooking facilities, and families with working parents often don’t have the time to cook traditional dishes.

“The trend is there, the demand is there, the appetite is there.”

Although the South Asian Business Association doesn’t know how many tiffin services are operating in Metro, there are dozens of options.

Suksjot Singh, a 28-year-old Surrey engineer, and his three roommates, all students and all from the same hometown in the Punjab, rely on tiffin delivery services.

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“To make this food takes hours,” said Singh. “We come home every day and it’s outside our door. We get six naan, a bowl of rice and two bowls of curry vegetables from Monday to Saturday.”

It’s also cheaper.

Singh has done the math: he figures a 13-inch Subway sandwich every day for dinner would cost about $100 more a month than the $230 he pays for 24 full meals from Tikka Shikka in Surrey.

Many tiffin services are offered by restaurants, like TiffinBox by Silk. New startups like Ash Foods Tiffin Service are growing to meet the demand.

“We started in 2020 (during COVID-19) to support North Indians coming to Vancouver,” said Ash co-founder Sumeet Bajaj. “Restaurants were closed, new immigrants were staying in hotels and couldn’t cook or get the food they liked delivered.”

Now Ash caters to a wide range of regional tastes and counts people with roots in Delhi, Punjab, Pakistan and Afghanistan among its customers. They also serve about 150 long-haul truckers.

Ash started small, preparing 20 tiffins a day. Now they’re weeks away from opening a new commercial kitchen in Surrey with a capacity to prepare 2,000 tiffins a day.

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“It’s going nuts,” said Bajaj.

Co-founder Harbans Swatch — his wife, Navneet, is head chef — said tiffin service is different than restaurant food, which many find too heavy or spicy for regular consumption.

“This is homemade. You can eat it every day.”

For Sidhu, offering daily tiffin service is about more than just the flavours of home.

“In India, the culture is very much about making food at home and sharing it with others.”

During the pandemic, when his restaurant was shut down for five months, he honed his tiffin service by donating thousands of meals to front-line hospital workers, many of whom have become his most faithful regulars.

He remembers his mother and grandmother in India cooking for those who had less.

“Every night our house was full.”

While this modern version of tiffin service may be new to some, it’s growing like a dabbawala network, delivering food, culture and comfort — family-style.

dryan@postmedia.com

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