BACKGROUND
Large-scale promotion and development of women-run food service enterprises happened in Kerala under the aegis of the State Poverty Eradication Mission of the Government of Kerala, popularly known as Kudumbashree Mission. The Café Kudumbashree model is about building community owned enterprises into professionally run food service units, engaging with the market from a relative position of strength.
In order to develop a holistic ecosystem for the women’ enterprise units in the food service sector, the Kudumbashree Mission created technical support agencies such as Adebha Institute for Food Research and Hospitality Management (AIFRHM) for providing regular inputs. The hospitality sector ecosystem has been built with local resources and capabilities. Two key elements of this ecosystem are AIFRHM and the network of Micro enterprise consultants (MEC). The combination of the AIFRHM team and MECs has worked as a catalyst to improve involvement of women in entrepreneurship and to develop professionalism among the women entrepreneurs to run their business effectively.
While helping the women to improve their business operations, the approach also focused on developing wider market opportunities for them in forms of food court and food fests. The appeal of ‘home-cooked’ food was the key unique proposition for the Kudumbashree food service units. The Café Kudumbashree approach, right from the beginning focussed on building women’s ability to cook and serve food that was ‘local’ and ‘natural’ to them. This meant that each food service unit catered to specific tastes from their social-cultural-geographic specificities. Thus, when aggregated at the State level, the Café Kudumbashree units provided a wide diversity of culinary traditions and products.
As of September 2020, the Café Kudumbashree network has 2425 food service enterprises across Kerala. 9825 women are reported to be owner-workers of these enterprises. Catering units are the most common type of food service enterprises in the Kudumbashree network, with 40% share. 33% of the enterprises are in the nature of kiosks, tea-shops or mini cafeterias. Only 9% of the enterprises are categorised as full-fledged restaurants. 18% are office canteens. Among these enterprises, 15% of the units have reported investments of more than 2.5 lakh,49% of units have investment between 50,000 to 2.5 lakh and 36% units have capital investment of less than 50,000.
In 2012, the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India recognized Kudumbashree’s potential to support other States by announcing it as a National Resource Organisation (NRO) under the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM). As NRO, Kudumbashree holds the mandate to partner with interested State Rural Livelihood Missions (SRLMs) and provide them with technical and implementation support. In Oct 2018, Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society (BRLPS), also known as Jeevika, and Kudumbashree NRO jointly piloted an institutional canteen model known as “Didi Ki Rasoi''. The successful pilot of the foodservice enterprise based on the learning of the cafe Kudumbashree Model opened up scope of replication of the model throughout the Nation.
Key Features:
1. Training and Resource Centre.
2. Centre will have well-qualified/experienced trainers and sector domain expert along with community professionals.
3. NRC will develop standard operating procedure and protocols, capacity building modules and handholding systems for scalable enterprises.
4. Support partner SRLMs in developing their capacities by creating State level Resource Persons and establishing Regional Resource Centre.
5. Support partner SRLMs in developing State-specific protocols, capacity building modules and handholding systems to support large-scale promotion of Scalable Enterprises.
6. Develop Shelf of Projects with Model Business Plan.
7. Develop Exposure sites.