When Ayush Dhaka, a 25-year-old engineer from Delhi, first moved to Bengaluru in 2022, his to-do list was very clear—find a house and then a good north Indian restaurant, not necessarily in that order.
Having spent all his life in north India, Dhaka’s big concern was not being able to adapt to the food in the south. Two years later, that has changed. Now, he actually relishes many dishes from the region.
But whenever he can’t go home on festivals and the craving for home-cooked food hits his gut (and heart), he relies on some trustworthy cloud kitchens, “where I can get good and authentic food which is a little hard to find here otherwise,” he says.
Dhaka is one of the many young Indians who now prefer getting food delivered to them on festivals. A report by market research firm Redseer had earlier this year pointed out that food giants like Zomato, Swiggy, and FoodPanda see a significant uptick in orders on festivals.
It’s not just these food giants, though. There’s a host of other players, too— from the woman who runs a cloud kitchen in your locality and has a special Diwali menu, to services like BookMyChef and CaterNinja—when it comes to festive meals.
The cloud kitchen next door
For Reetika Singh, a 26-year-old teacher based in Lucknow, life lately has been about adjusting to many new things. After getting married in February, she has had to move jobs and cities. And it’s been a lot.
But for her too, like everyone else, Diwali has always been about food and family. Growing up, the food her mother prepared came to encapsulate the festival itself for her. She, though, has decided to outsource the work now.
Singh says, “I’ve always seen my mother do everything, even as a working woman, and feel burnt out. I don’t want to do that to myself or set that unrealistic example for my kids. And when there are practical options available, why put this unnecessary pressure on myself?”
Her idea is simple. As a working woman, she has limited time when it comes to preparing for the festival. She says that cleaning the house is one job that she can’t outsource completely, but food is one area where she can take all the help she needs. Similarly, outsourcing the decorations for the festival will be expensive, so that’s one thing she’s added to her personal to-do list.
“It’s not like I’m compromising on anything. On Diwali, I’ll order from the cloud kitchen next door in my society—it’s reliable and it’s hygienic. Plus, the cost is pretty reasonable. I can also ask her to customise the menu to get the ‘home wala feeling’ that I’m looking for,” she adds.
Nishit Dalal, the founder of Delhi-based cloud kitchen Bombay Boy, fully agrees. For him, the essence of home-cooked food is the right ingredients and the freshness of a meal. So, he has tried to bring exactly that to his clients at festivals.
Dalal says, “For festivals, we come up with special menus where we combine regional cuisines with a twist. We want to give people comfort food, but also introduce them to newer flavours, a combination of tradition and modernisation. Our Diwali menu is khandvi, dhoklas, and undhiyus from the Gujarati section, kala sukka mutton, koliwada prawns, and bhuna chicken from Maharashtra, and much more.”
Interestingly, people now also want to get the experiential vibes when it comes to Diwali dinners. Services like BookMyChef, where you can get private chefs and private bartenders for an intimate dinner or even a bigger party, are all the rage now.
Chef Harshet Agarwal, the assistant general manager of operations at BookMyChef, says, “We have a vast demography of clientele across our operating cities—Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Goa, Pune, and Mumbai. People who don’t want the hassle of cooking on a festival day and who are well versed with our services opt for it.”
Agarwal adds that they make it a point to assign chefs who either have an expertise in the regional cuisine or the festival’s delicacies to ensure that they create “lasting memories and experiences” for their clients.
On BookMyChef’s special Diwali menu, you have the option to opt for one beverage, four appetisers, four main course dishes, and three desserts in a complete meal box. The menu has everything from Thai lime soda to kung pao chicken to Kolhapuri veg curry. And of course, a whole set of Indian and continental sweet dishes. There’s also a premium option you can opt for if you want a senior chef.
Catering the easy way out
However, for many women, who have for years slogged in the kitchen during festivities, even outsourcing one meal on “auspicious days” comes as a shock.
Shatakshi Srivastava, a Noida resident who works in an IT start-up, has now gotten used to getting festive meals delivered at home for the past few years. But when she recently met an aunt of hers, the concept felt shocking to the latter.
Srivastava says, “I have seen the women of my family storming the kitchen throughout the day, throughout my life, even when help is available. Catering to every single person’s dietary preferences is almost second nature to them now. My aunt recently told me, ‘I never realised that if I don’t cook 10 different things on Diwali, I can still order from outside and enjoy it’. Because they are so used to doing everything by themselves, it’s a burden that they’ve made peace with.”
HR professional Dimple Madaan, 26, who was born and brought up in Delhi and moved to Canada two years ago, feels the same. She says, “I’m not sure festivals ever felt like a holiday for my mother. Diwali was a whirlwind of guests for weeks, with her preparing countless family dinners.”
Ever since Srivastava and Madaan started earning and took charge of the household, they made sure that festivals meant the same thing to them and their mother—and not leave an uneven burden for the latter. Their tried and tested list includes Swiggy, Zomato, and the likes, but also services like JustMyRoots, an intercity food delivery platform.
Srivastava likes that she pays an affordable price to delegate the 100 different worries her mother would otherwise have had—what vegetables to buy, what to cook, what crockery to bring out, and what beverages to prepare. “The convenience in ordering from outside is that if the home feeling means two different cuisines to two different people, you can have both of them without toiling in the kitchen for hours,” she says.
This is something that Anurag Mishra, founder of CaterNinja, has tried to overcome. CaterNinja is an online food delivery platform that has multiple kitchens in the six cities where it’s serviceable—Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru. “Festivals are a time for joy, but organising even small home gatherings can feel like a challenge. Despite shrinking guest lists, the workload often remains the same, and it typically falls on women to manage the details,” he says.
With CaterNinja, Mishra says he has tried to create the perfect customisable menu for festivals like Diwali and for even the pre-festivities like the many card parties you might have been invited to.
Adds Mishra, “Our special festival menus are customer favourites every season. Plus, our region-specific menus offer an easy and convenient way to select the right cuisine for any gathering.”
Like BookMyChef, CaterNinja, too, offers services like live counters for pizza, momo, chaat, tandoors, etc, that they say are a hit with their consumers.
Even Qmin, a food delivery brand by Indians Hotels Company, curates Diwali menus that are accessible to a wide demographic. A spokesperson says, “We celebrate the spirit of Diwali with our Qmin festive hampers, including Twinkling Treasures and Sparkle ‘n’ Spice, offering an exquisite selection of mithais, almond rocks, chocolate dates, and oat cookies. Our Diwali menus feature local delicacies that capture the essence of festive flavours.”
Similarly, ITC Hotels and Welcomhotel have a festive menu aptly named ‘Celebration Edition by Gourmet Couch’, which has everything from appetisers to full course meals—whether it be your favourite Asian flavours, your specialty dal makhni, or murgh khurchan kathi—they’ve got you covered.
Across the globe
What’s also interesting is that even if you’re sitting halfway across the globe, technology has made the distance a little less daunting.
Madaan, sitting 11,000 km away in Toronto, has been relying on multiple apps and services to order full meals and curated boxes to ease the responsibilities for her family.
Samiran Sengupta, founder and CEO, JustMyRoots, says, “Be it Durga Pujo or Diwali, festivals are a time when people want to indulge in their favourite foods—which could mean either going to the nearest momo stall, or if you live away from family, missing your ghar ka khaana. But we try to bridge that gap when it comes to non-perishable foods, and certain perishable foods as well.”
In the past few years, every Diwali, Sengupta says he’s seen the orders for curated meals and meal boxes go up 7-8 times than they are on normal days. “We get the highest demand for certain items from restaurants in Kolkata, Jaipur, Amritsar, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru and Delhi,” he adds.
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Cooking curated
Get chefs at home
BookMyChef: Offers private chefs, private bartenders, and catering solutions for special occasions and festivals; you can customise menu and cuisine as per your needs
ChefKart: Serviceable in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru; ensures ‘every household in India can enjoy quality food prepared by cooks in their own kitchens’
Get curated hampers
Qmin: Owned by Indian Hotels Company, the food delivery brand specialises in festive menus and hampers that also include sweets & savoury boxes
Gourmet Couch by ITC Hotels and Welcomhotel has a festive menu named ‘Celebration Edition’ which delivers curated menus from appetisers to meals
CaterNinja: The food delivery platform works mainly in the catering space — with meal boxes curated for smaller parties and gatherings; it works on special festive menus too
Get home food
JustMyRoots: The intercity platform delivers food boxes in select other countries too; order from iconic restaurants hundreds of kilometres away, be it Arsalan’s Biryani or Tunday Kababi
Tastes2Plate: Another platform on which you can order different cuisines from different cities, and also get food delivered from your home in another city
Festive bites
Not just Diwali, you can get curated hampers and special menus for other festivals too, such as…
Onam Sadhya
Ganesh Chaturthi
Holi
Raksha Bandhan
Navratri
Durga Puja