So all too often, this is a start-up woe ignored in most start-ups I know except a few started by valley entrepreneurs or ex google employees in India – FOOD.
Three to four times a day your soldiers, your mercenary of dreams – the start up team breaks to a frenzied question – What to eat. Some open their lunch boxes (dabbas – we call it dabs at Letsintern) , some walk out to nearby snack shop (tapri) and soon Zomato is exercising its search engine. A couple of times a week it might mean stepping out to the nearest restaurant for a quick cheap meal.
We did this for 2 years and then an age old solution struck us, lets get a cooking help.
Now, our Head-office is Pune – a bunglow which we use as office, crash pad and an entertainment zone rolled into one. We had a kitchen, we had a stove and an oven. We did nothing with it. So in comes Kishore bhaiya in July. He comes in at 9 30am – cleans the office, makes us all breakfast, pre-lunch tea, lunch and dinner if we are staying late. he gets us smokes when we need them, he gets us fruits and oher snacks or makes some when we are hungry in the evening. He even cycles for an occasional beer during late evening product hacks.
In less than 3 months, he has earned the award for being a critical soul of our existence, our super-man, with me already dreaming of teaching him and promoting him to be our first head chef or office manager. He is brilliant with food and cleaning.
Anyway, point here is – nobody steps our from 10 to 6 pm, we get our lunch at our tables – we gobble it in less than 10 mins normally discussing ideas with each other. We all feel a lot healthy eating what we want, when we want and cooked at home. We have made him switch to olive oil, he cooks the weekly chicken, mutton, fish and fruit platters. We get dosas sometimes and omlettes sometime. People step into office in time because they are hungry and breakfast is alluring. I get my milk and egg whites too. Dinner is at office and so many a times, we stay back to eat food before stepping out or going back, hence making us work longer and most often gives us space for post work ideation over chilled out meals and beers ( he cycles for them – remember!)
A culture we soon want to replicate in our new Delhi office, followed soon elsewhere where we have a sizeable team.
Cost: Letsintern pays 25% of the overall cost. The other 75% is divided by the 12 people in our office including co-founders. Why does everyone pay – well the cost is 20% of what each person was spending earlier on food rom outside ( its as cheaper than a dabba service too) and we get more, much better and healthier food – Round the clock. Oh! Also, a clean office, loos, smokes and beers delivered. IF we smoked grass, he would get that too 😉
Conclusion: As start-ups – solve these issues of your team as they are too busy solving the larger issues. An average team will lose 60 mins – 120 mins per person on food woes, almost 2 man-days per day in a 10 member team.
Simplicity works.
asha chaudhry
hey rishabh,
is kishore bhaiya still with you?!
🙂
ps: what else are you guys up to at letsintern. do share!!
Sushrut Munje
Rishabh! Super seeing you here!
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
wow … incredible!
How i miss running a small startup
Ps – this kinda setup is much more difficult in Mumbai…
Gunjan Kejriwal
 This is what we do at Roomys ( http://www.roomys.in ) too..we have our master chef in Bablu Bhaiya !
Zeeshan Chawdhary
This is a great recipe for startup success, time is a crucial factor for startups, At a lot of companies that do a regular 9-5 grind, I have seen that the work actually starts post lunch, People start arriving in office from 9:30 to 11AM.
By the time they settle down, its 12 o clock and time to start discuss lunch, make plans, order, call home , blah blah. Eventually after lunch people do the ‘real’ work.
It is more bad at places that do a 10 – to 6/7 work time.
Great initiative. We must all remember the only thing that matters
“We work for food“
Rishabh Gupta
Well said bro – We work for food.Â
Rishabh Gupta
Small is the new big 🙂 And Mumbai is no longer the city of dreams ( traffic, pollution, stench, huge start-up costs, and lifestyle pressures)Â
Rishabh Gupta
He very much is. He is an extremely important member. Will share more stories in due course, right now focusing on how to take the company from India to the world. 🙂Â
Rishabh Gupta
I am just stalking you.Â
Rishabh Gupta
Awesome.Â