2 Food Ventures Started During Covid-19 Are Thriving Today

The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns were a challenging time for India’s food and beverage (F&B) industry. Restaurants, street vendors, and catering businesses faced massive losses as dining out came to a halt. With strict movement restrictions, labour shortages, and disrupted supply chains, many eateries shut down permanently. Iconic food joints struggled to stay afloat, and delivery services became their only lifeline.

However, amidst these struggles, innovation and resilience emerged. Many cloud kitchens and home-based food businesses started during the lockdown, leveraging online platforms like social media and food delivery apps to reach customers. Demand for home-cooked meals, immunity-boosting foods, and ready-to-cook kits increased, giving rise to new business opportunities. Entrepreneurs, including those who lost jobs in other industries, turned to the F&B sector, offering unique products such as gourmet meal kits, artisanal bread, and regional delicacies.

D2C (direct-to-consumer) brands flourished as people preferred safe, hygienic, and contactless food options. Even established restaurants adapted by launching DIY meal kits, frozen food lines, and subscription-based tiffin services.

While the pandemic was a difficult phase for traditional food businesses, it also accelerated digital adoption and innovation in the Indian F&B space, shaping new consumer habits and business models that continue to thrive today.    

The Gourmet Burgers Story

CEO and Chef Akshay Bhagat, helms Gourmet Burgers which started in the lockdown and faced its fair share of challenges. Having studied in Mumbai and worked at the Emirates Flight Kitchen in UAE, apart from having had the opportunity to work with Michelin Star Chef Garima Arora, Chef Vicky Ratnani, and MasterChef Australia’s Gary Mehigan, Akshay was all set to take up the position of a junior sous-chef at Noble House Hotel in California. Ten days before he was scheduled to fly, the world went into a lockdown. Akshay who had earlier helped his extended family in shaping up a continental menu, for their venture, decided to put his research and skills to use to start his own food business. Gourmet Burgers, was founded in 2021 by Akshay and his sibling Ritika. The journey however was far from easy.

The Challenges

“I think we started from zero. We were making burgers at home, and my parents, brother, and sister were all working on this - taking orders, cooking, delivering, marketing, and promoting the brand on social media, everything was done in-house. My brother is a photographer and he helped me shoot photos of the food for our social media page,” Akshay tells us.

“There was a lot of R&D before we started, I would time the burgers and see how long each leg is taking. I learnt everything from designing a menu, packaging, and branding, online. Delivery was a challenge for us, my brother helped with that. Purchasing was also a challenge. We had to sneak out and go to buy equipment and ingredients,” he adds.

Akshay managed to turn these challenges around quickly. His management skills taught him the art of keeping stock and inventory ready. One of his greatest advantages, he admits, was having zero overheads. “My staff was my family and we were operating from home. I didn't have any salaries and rentals to pay. This also made delivering larger volumes a problem so we were open only in the evenings. We would only accept pre-orders when we started and later on we started taking direct orders. When someone orders a burger, they expect it to be delivered within 15-20 minutes. That’s something we had to learn to do. We had designated days in the week for an area. For example, Monday was for Chembur, Tuesday for Kharghar, and so on,” Akshay explains.

The USP

During COVID-19, it was Akshay’s sister’s idea that they include hand-written notes with each burger delivery. "We could get orders from people who lived in America, Singapore, or the UAE and wanted us to write a customised message for their parents and deliver the burger orders to them. This made it personal and also gave our business a boost,” says Akshay.

Akshay believes the USP of his brand is the techniques they use to make a burger. The burger buns, patties, and sauces are all made in-house. "For me, the burger is like a Michelin bite where your patty, its texture, juiciness, and the bun’s softness, all matter a lot. That's also why we don't do tall burgers, like jawbreakers. It should be a complete bite, where you feel all the textures." Today Gourmet Burgers has 3 outlets in Kharghar, Nerul, and Powai respectively. They have 11 non-vegetarian burgers, and, 9 vegetarian burgers on the menu. Each burger has a different country of origin and a different taste.

“For vegetarians, our Harissa Cottage Cheese burgers are very popular. The Non-vegetarian smash-style mutton burgers are our specialty and no one was making them here when we started. Smash-style is a proper American-style burger where two patties are smashed on a hot grill and then we add cheddar cheese slices and caramelised onions. We also have a Mexican Burger and our Dexter burger, inspired by the cartoon show, is a guilt-free burger that uses zero oil for cooking, no mayo and the bun is whole wheat.”

The Patasa Story 

Palak Panchal was a Chartered Accountant before she became a chef and baker. “Baking was always therapeutic for me, it was my little escape even when work and studying got heavy and boring. I applied for my first internship in F&B at Yogisattva Cafe in Bandra where I trained and honed my skills under my mentor chef Raveena Taurani. I worked at Yogisattva for about 2 years,” Palak tells us.

“I got married in 2019 and then expressed my wish to dive deeper into the F&B industry and my family fully supported my decision. This led me to enroll in a school for European Pastry and I did a certified course in eggless baking under Chef Anil Rohira and Chef Vikas Bagul. My course got done in January of 2021 and my initial idea was to make and sell artisanal mithai. I wanted to use French techniques and elements with Indian Mithai. This came from my mom being a Mithai tutor. When I was very young, my mom who is a great cook would take classes where she taught people how to make mithai. So I was familiar with the basics of how Mithai works,” she adds.

Palak’s journey has been nothing short of transformative and full of challenges. She started from home with a small studio next to the kitchen, outgrew the studio as the orders increased, and moved to a central facility where she could produce with more finesse. For 3 years she operated as a cloud/delivery kitchen, delivered almost 2,500 cakes and about 4000 gift boxes. Customers always asked her where her store was. That’s when she decided to take the next step and go retail. In September 2024, she started The Patasa Cafe located in Nerul, Navi Mumbai.

The Challenges

“I didn't have a fully running business at the time of COVID. I had just started and most of my supporters were my friends and family and they spread the word around. One of the biggest challenges was the procurement of the ingredients, with regards to whatever we were trying to sell and also delivering them because mobility was a big issue. Then I was working from a small studio at home. It was a small balcony that was attached to the kitchen, which my mother-in-law very lovingly gave me to work out of. In about six months, I felt the need to move to a commercial space because I could not contain the capacity in that much space. That's when we got our studio. Three years into the studio, we did well. And we now have a cafe,” Palak shares.

Apart from Covid-19 and the lockdown, Palak tells us there were other issues she had to deal with as a first-time entrepreneur. “I wouldn't say any of this was easy. I had my own set of challenges, like thinking that I was not good enough. I am in the same market with a lot of people who have great knowledge, and vast experience, while Patasa has just been born out of pure passion,” says Palak. 

However, during this time, Palak has sharpened her skills and learned a lot. “Customer service has been a bit of a task sometimes. Even in one out of 10 cases where somebody says something nasty I would just take it to heart. What made me survive and thrive I think is my constant need to develop and improve my product. I need to be at par with other people who have better knowledge and more experience, so I keep trying and pushing myself to do better.”

The USP

Palak started her business by making artisanal mithai and that worked for her. “The first Diwali season was a hit and we did a spectacular number of 150 boxes. That was very big for me then. For a couple of years, I kept both going hand in hand, the mithai and the desserts,” says Palak.

“After that, I realised the demand for Mithai is always only going to be very seasonal, which is from Raksha Bandhan in August to around Diwali, which is in November. That's when I decided to do a well-curated menu for desserts, and cakes. Celebrations happen across the year and people will always have something to buy from us," says Palak.

"I still have a wonderful range of mithai which I do for festive seasons, probably for birth announcements, gifting, and hampers because people want to celebrate with other people and they want to send them something that's unique and is not available at every regular mithai shop. We now also make Italian gelatos, which we churn in-house. All our freshly made desserts and cakes are available at our cafe along with a range of small batches of gelatos, specialty coffee, and finger food," she concludes.