Recently, the Food for Cause Team was lucky enough to be invited to a private tour of the kitchens of the Akshaya Patra Foundation in Bangalore by Vidya Chaudhuri, who is their Relationship Manager (and, on a personal note, may I add that she is also a very warm and dedicated person). Akshaya Patra
Foundation (Akshaya Patra means “unending supply” in Hindi) was begun 10 years ago with the simple mission of providing food for children. Today, this organization provides hot delicious meals to 1.3 million children as well as other needy people such as the elderly or pregnant women every single day.
The scale of this mission just astounded me when I heard about it. So when presented with this amazing opportunity to tour the large kitchen facility in South Bangalore where the food preparation takes place for approximately 200,000 meals each day, we were thrilled to visit and learn about their operations.
We were so impressed with what we saw that I wanted to share this experience with our Foodies. After all, who doesn’t want to know how such delicious meals get made in such quantities?
The kitchen facility is quite large. It looks like a small factory of sorts from the outside and not at all like a large cafeteria which is what I had envisioned in my mind. Upon arrival, we were greeted by Vidya and Mr. Akinchana Caitanya Das, who is in charge of operations for the South Bangalore kitchen and keeps the place in tip-top shape under strict quality control.
Basically, the kitchen is separated into 3 levels or tiers. The top tier is where the food preparation takes place, such as cleaning, chopping, weighing and measuring. The sheer volume we are dealing with is quite amazing – think in terms of thousands of kilos of vegetables or tons of grains each day. The ingredients are cleaned and measured and then gets dropped into large chutes which funnels the food to the second tier, where the food lands in huge vats to be cooked under steam heat.
After cooking, the cooked food then gets dropped down immediately to the first tier via more chutes which is where the food is promptly packaged and loaded into trucks waiting to deliver the food to hungry children in government schools and other needy people all over Bangalore. This system is implemented in all of their kitchens throughout India which together serve 1.3 million people.
After the tour, we got to enjoy the cooked meal and I do have to say that it was really very delicious. We ate rice, sambal, delicious corn flakes seasoned with spices along with mixed rice as well as a spiced buttermilk drink in their immaculately clean facilities which are cleaned constantly with not one mosquito or fly in sight (also, everyone has to wear special rubber slippers at the entrance as well as hair nets all throughout the facility). We were tempted to take second helpings but refrained as it was only 8:30 a.m.!
A hero is someone who is endowed with great strength or ability. Anyone who can feed 1.3 million needy people every single day qualifies as a hero in my book. I hope that you will take time to learn more about this amazing organization by visiting their website www.akshayapatra.org.
With much gratitude,
Namee Oberst
Founder, Food for Cause
Heroic Effort of Feeding 1.3 Million People EveryDay
Tuesday, April 12, 2011