Business Practices

The food philosophy that we follow is to:

• Choose ingredients that are not only affordable, but also healthy, nutritious and gentle on the environment in terms of cruelty, resource consumption, and production of waste
• Follow food preparation methods that aim to preserve their nutritional value without introducing harmful by-products
• And then have fun preparing meals that are bursting with flavour, enticing with their aroma, and visually stunning

Choosing Ingredients

There are certain non-negotiable criteria that ingredients have to meet before we will consider using them:

• They must not contain any animal products (meat, eggs, dairy or gelatine). While this is done out of compassion for animals, it also ensures that our food is free from cholesterol, and avoids the danger of toxic chemicals that rise in concentration as one moves higher up the food chain
• They must not contain any artificial ingredients (flavourants, colourants, thickeners or preservatives). This is done as a safety measure, and it leads us to buy unprocessed ingredients rather than premade stocks, sauces, and other such foods

There are additional criteria that we use as guidelines when choosing ingredients:

• We give preference to organically grown ingredients, unless they are so much more expensive that using them is not commercially viable
• We give preference to locally grown ingredients when we can find them, and grow some of them ourselves
• While we try to avoid genetically modified ingredients, it is difficult to be sure because they are often not labelled as such

Meal Preparation

Meals are freshly prepared on the day (usually morning) for which they have been ordered. This includes all the rotis and sauces. The only exception is nibbles; because they consist of nuts and dried fruit, they can be prepared days in advance.

None of our meals is fried in oil. We instead use a combination of toasting and cooking. This is done to minimise the production of trans fats, with their associated health risks.

We do some of the food processing ourselves. This includes sprouting and drying, especially when the ingredients were grown at our premises.

We make compost at our premises from all the organic waste that we produce. Recyclable items that we cannot compost, we send for recycling.

Community Support

Operating a catering service gives us an opportunity to be of service to our clients in ways that go beyond the preparation of food. Please contact us if you would like to participate in any of these initiatives:

• If you happen to have organic kitchen waste that you don’t know what to do with, we’d be happy to unburden you and give you compost in return
• If you happen to be growing food at home and don’t know what to do with the surplus, we’d be delighted to buy it from you, provided that it is something that we use
• Furthermore, we have excess supply of some of the seeds that we plant, and we don’t mind sharing them with other urban farmers free of charge