Bliss-Girls

As we work to meet the demands of life, we put our dreams on the backburner. Even those who enjoy whatever it is that they are doing for a living, will have things that they want to do but have not had the opportunity to fulfil their dreams. As adults juggling with multiple roles, it is easy to not recognize opportunities when life presents them, often because they arise in adverse times. Lucky are the ones who spot these opportunities and work hard to realise their dreams. This post is about Lavanya Guruprasad, who is an ex-employee of a leading national bank and is now a proud business woman in UK. Her natural resilience has helped her overcome crisis and has set her on the path of success. Read on to find more about her and how she converted her passion into business.

Early life

Lavanya was born and raised in India. In her childhood, every few years her family moved houses as her father was in a transferrable job. She remembers making lot of friends in every new area that they moved to. She spent a lot of her time playing on streets with her friends. She was quite popular at her school and college. She remembers taking part in all sports and cultural activities. She was also throwball team captain in her school.

When she was in Engineering, she had a lot of friends and they would often hang out at her place. Their meetups would never be complete without Lavanya’s specially made food – pav bhaji’s, pani puri’s, behl puri, paneer tikka. Her friends loved her food and Lavanya would proudly announce that one day she would open her food cart.

Cooking as passion

Her interest in cooking began since a very young age. She enjoyed watching cooking shows a lot and learnt lot of new recipes. Her passion was soo deep rooted that every evening she would prepare something special for her mom just to surprise her when she returned from work. Post her marriage, her husband and in-laws relished her cooking.

Starting the business

In 2022, due to personal reasons she quit her job in a bank and moved to UK. She loved her job a lot and that she could no longer continue doing what she loved the most was depressing. To come out that pain she started looking for alternate options. Its then that she decided to take her passion for cooking to next level. She started her home cooked food catering service. Lavanya says since she worked in a service industry for long, it only made sense for her to enter food business so she could offer food cooked with love to people. Her business motto is ‘serve tasty food, aim customer satisfaction’.

It wasn’t an easy decision to make though. She had her doubts and fears. But with the support of her husband and encouragement from her family she took the first big step. Since then there has been no looking back. Today she caters afternoon meals, dinner and snacks. She caters traditional South Indian cuisine, North Indian cuisine, Italian cuisine and Chats.

First event catering

It was a very proud and key moment in her catering journey. She put up a stall for an Holi Celebration event. She wanted to introduce Bangalore street food to the people attending event. Her menu included Bangalore’s famous masala puri, Dahi puri and jamoon. More than 100 people visited her food stall. She says it was a very joyous experience but was equally tiring.

For the event, Lavanya had to prepare food without onion and garlic. That was a challenge as traditionally Masala puri (anyone who has tried it in Bangalore would know) is loaded with raw onions. She had to find alternatives, but that was not the only thing she had to think through. She researched and carefully decided everything from the size of servings to cutlery, to how the dishes would be transported to venue and how it will be presented on plate. She remembers saying to herself that this is an opportunity given by the universe to her and that she needs to make this a successful one. Her resolve and hard work paid off and the food stall was a huge success.

Challenges of running a catering service

Running catering services is physically very demanding she says. Lot of preparation work needs to be done and its no easy feat to accomplish while having a house to run, small kids to take care of. But these do seem small if one is very passionate about the job. By planning minute to minute detail the seemingly monstrous task can be well managed. One needs to plan everything from the choice of dishes for the day, the ingredients required, where to buy, the quantity of vegetables to chop, when to chop, how many minutes to cook, at what stage to add which ingredient so on and so forth.

She also says it takes a lot of effort to maintain happy customers. Consistency is hard to achieve. Persistent efforts and sticking to standards is a must.

Suggestions for someone looking to enter catering business

Strengths: Know your key strengths and know your weakness. For example, one might be very good at main course and starters but not so great at desserts. Avoid taking any risks until you build your customer base. And try to place your best dishes on the menu.

Pricing: Pricing is obviously very important when we get into business. Lavanya say “she “I just use a simple method – size down everything to single unit and calculate based on ingredients used. Also keeping in mind about time, energy and manpower used. Also one thing we must remember that it not advisable to match our prices with those of restaurants as they do it bulk and operational expenses will be much lesser than what a home cook does. But you can keep it as a reference point and arrive at price accordingly”

Plan: Plan week’s menu in advance. Plan every single detail for every single recipe. Be also flexible with the menu to accommodate changes.

Taste: Taste your food at every single stage. When something is at risk, stick back to your roots especially with measurements.

Use modern tools: Invest in modern tools. choppers, blenders, instant pots, Knives etc. It adds to efficiency.

Budget: She says an initial investment of 500£ would be required in addition to running costs around 60£ for initial few months. As for returns, she says the margin is slow to start off but will gradually increase.

Future Plans

Lavanya would like to introduce more healthy recipes and also traditional lost recipes. When it comes to health she believes that one is benefitted if they consume more native food.

She is also passionate about many other things and is hoping to follow realise her dreams in future. I wish her all the best.

Dear reader, thank you for your time. I hope you enjoyed reading how Lavanya converted her passion into business. I wish everyone reading this post too will get ample opportunities to live your dreams.