Brunch Bites Private Limited is a food catering and delivery start-up based in Goa and Pune. It commenced operations on 13th July 2017. It is a platform for food delivery to individuals, schools, corporates, and industrial catering and operates in 3 verticals:
1. Industrial Catering: It provides catering services to industrial units with a focus on hygiene, homeliness, and healthy food, combined with the use of technology for a better customer experience.
2. Direct to Consumer platform: Customers can order their daily, weekly, or monthly breakfast, lunch, or dinner from Brunch Bites. They also offer customized meal/snack boxes for events and occasions for individuals as well as corporate clients.
3. Home Chefs: It serves as a platform for home chefs and provides them with opportunities to boost their income. It assists them with various matters related to running a home-based food business such as getting necessary permissions and licenses, curation of their menus, etc.
The firm currently delivers around 2000+ meals a day, serving individual customers as well as through bulk deliveries for customers in industrial units.
The Founders of Brunch Bites
At the helm of affairs of Brunch Bites is Mr. Pritam Onsker. Pritam holds a Master’s degree in Business Studies from Pune University. He has also completed a programme in Management Development from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management – Ahmedabad. He has worked in the corporate sector for more than 21+ years with stints at big firms like Crompton Greaves, Hughes Telecom, Reliance Communications and Airtel. His last 11 years in the corporate world were spent working for TATA Communications. He jumped into the world of entrepreneurship in December 2016 when he launched his first start-up TailorSmart (tailorsmart.in) in Pune. The venture is an e-tailoring platform where people can get all types of clothes designed and stitched according to their chosen style and size, right at their doorstep. The start-up has a presence in 7 cities in India. It is due to open its first overseas franchise in Malaysia very soon. The huge success of TailorSmart motivated Pritam to set up his second venture Brunch Bites (brunchbites.in) in 2017.
Pritam considers himself fortunate to have worked in challenging markets like India and the SAARC Region, the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East and in the Africa region in challenging positions like Head of Marketing, Head of Corporate Strategy for emerging markets in Singapore, and Head of Business in Africa. His exposure on both sides of the table makes an interesting combination. He is an ardent lover of innovation and technology and heads the Founder Institute-Goa, a business incubator, which is graduating 6 start-ups in its first cohort. He also leads the Innovation and Start-Up Panel at CII-Goa and is also a Member on the panel of CII-Western Region. When not at work, Pritam spends his time running half-marathons and travelling.
Pritam is assisted in the day-to-day running of Brunch Bites by Amruta Onsker. Amruta holds a Post-Graduate Diploma in Business Management from IES, Mumbai. She is an accomplished HR professional who has worked for brands like Poddar, TeamLease etc.
The Journey Of Brunch Bites
Pritam says that when he looked at the tiffin boxes of some school going students, he saw that they had only items like cheese and bread or butter and bread, with one fruit like a banana or an apple. “This was neither healthy nor nutritious”, he says. “Plus, preparing these tiffins took up a lot of time which parents could use to spend with their kids. So, we decided to change this and made tiffins which were colourful, healthy and hygienic. We introduced sliders with beetroot pattie or ragi halwa. This is how our journey began”, he says. Brunch Bites’ tiffin program got off to a great start when it was first launched in 2017. “We used to do more than 250+ tiffins in a day, just in the Porvorim and Panjim area alone, when we just started off”, says Pritam.
However, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 hit the operations of Brunch Bites very badly. Since schools had closed down, there was a very low demand for tiffin services. Due to this, Brunch Bites shifted their target client base to industries and began to provide tiffin services for workers in industrial units.
This was also the time when they got to serve many COVID patients who were admitted in different health centres and whose families were facing an issue of arranging home-cooked meals for their loved ones. “This is when Brunch Bites stepped in to deliver meals and gained lots of blessings from its customers”, says Pritam. “It also inspired me to quit my job and take up the running of Brunch Bites full time”, he adds.
Currently, BrunchBites provides its services in the whole of Panjim and surrounding areas like Dona Paula, Bambolim, Ribandar, Porvorim, Pilerne, and Mapusa. They also serve the entire North Goa coastal belt and the Verna Industrial Estate as well.
Challenges Faced
Pritam says that one of the major challenges he faces while running his enterprise is manpower. “Be it delivery partners or sales people, getting the right set of people is a difficult task for us”, he says. He considers himself to be lucky to get all-round support from various quarters while setting up Brunch Bites. He is grateful to the Startup Promotion Cell – Government of Goa for all the support they provided to him while setting up his venture. He mentions that Brunch Bites is one of the very few start-ups which have received seed funding from the Government of Goa. He is also grateful to his IT team, his web developer Fabcoders led by Remmie Azavedo, his suppliers in Goa, and most importantly his customers who have all helped in making Brunch Bites a huge success.
The USP of Brunch Bites
When asked as to what makes Brunch Bites stand out from other food catering companies, Pritam explained that most food delivery companies forget about the hygiene, homeliness, and healthiness of the food they provide to their customers. “We, on the other hand, focus a lot on these 3 aspects of the food we provide”, he says. “We make sure that each of our food partners are carefully chosen and that they follow all our SOPs all the time. We have our supervisors who do all the double-checks on the same. We also help in creating jobs for those at the bottom of the work pyramid. We help our partners, who usually get business only during weekends, to get business even during weekdays”, he adds.
Future Plans
Recently, Brunch Bites started operations in Pune where they have introduced cuisines like Parsi, South Indian, etc. in their menu. They are planning to start operations in Bengaluru and Chennai very soon. In a bid to make it easier for customers to place orders for food, they will be rolling out their revamped website, their iOS app and their chatbot on WhatsApp very soon. Their Android app is already functional and is available for download on the Google Play Store.
Final Words
Pritam says that aspiring entrepreneurs in Goa should stay focused on creating a culture of adding value not just to their customers, but also to their peers, their competition, their suppliers, and last but not the least, to themselves. He says that Goa and Food, both have a great potential, and if we remain focused on creating value for our customers, we will always make it big.
Link to Brunch Bites Introductory video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtvDufk6RUA
