The Lunchbox Supply chain

A Dabbawala is someone who carries a Dabbas , an Aluminium cylindrical tin , containing home cooked food.Today there are 5,000 Dabbawala in Mumbai, delivering lunch to 200,000 people a day 400,000 transactions a day .At a mean of 200 rupees per lunch box per month, they need a turnover of 500 million rupees per annum , despite relatively low in a similar way investments in manpower and costs of transports.

In the morning they are available home by cycles to gather the dabba. they need standard time-schedules to charge dabbas on trains at the most stations and to sort them out at intermediate rail stations. The allotted time for selecting a dabba at a specific home is less than a moment . alittle delay at a specific household could hamper thousands of deliveries. From collection points, where the dabbawala are organised according the various destinations, dabbas are delivered to the workplace, and therefore the empty boxes returned to the worker's residence during the afternoon or day after.The lunch-boxes have distinguishing marks on them, clear code like a color or group of symbols indicating collection points, starting station, number for destination station and markings for handling Dabbawala at destination, building and floor. These codes are mostly memorised by Dabbawala. Dabbawalla are trained to find out precisely the clear code marked on the boxes and gain trusts from their customers, who often are long lasting clients, due to the reliability of the system in any circumstances.

The Dabbawala system is coordinated by local teams of 20-25 people supervised by a leader who assigns the dabbas to each customer in the city. Since 1890, wearing white outfit and traditional Gandhi Cap, Mumbai Army of 5,000 Dabbawalas fulfilling the hunger of just about 200,000 Mumbaikar with home-cooked food that's lug between home and office daily. About 125 years back, a Parsi banker wanted to possess home cooked food in office and gave this responsibility to the primary ever Dabbawala. many of us liked the thought and therefore the demand for Dabba delivery soared. it had been all informal and individual effort within the beginning, but visionary Mahadeo Havaji Bachche saw the chance and began the lunch delivery service in its present team-delivery format with 100 Dabbawalas.Still within the digital age, a military of Dabbawala delivers 200 ,000 lunches to Mumbai’s workers .Hot and healthy food are collected at a little price, in any season, from the residences of workers or from central kitchens, and daily provided to the purchasers in time .

References

https://mumbaidabbawala.in/