Gift Your Loved Ones a Delectable Assortment of Gourmet Tastes and Aromatic Memories, with Interesting Products from The Gourmet Box

• Q. Tell us about yourself and your background.
• Himanshi: Janice and I founded The Gourmet Box 8 years ago. I studied Bachelors in Management and worked for a few years, then I did my Masters in International Business and worked in a boutique consulting firm for a few years. We had been wanting to start something and our passion was in the food business and we saw a need for this.
  Janice: I studied International Banking and Finance. I went abroad to study and around the same time developed an interest in food. I started experimenting with food, making it, trying different cuisines, discussing recipes and restaurants. When we came back and tried making some of those recipes here, we ran into trouble finding the right ingredients. We saw a gap in the market for gourmet ingredients and food products. What we wanted to do was make it convenient for people to buy ingredients and create different types of food.


• Q. What led you to create The Gourmet Box?
• The availability of ingredients has changed absolutely in the last 8 years since we started out. It’s not like gourmet food was not available. It was, but there would be random brands that weren’t curated and you had to figure out from a large selection if something was good or not. We started with the aim to have a website with very good ingredients, and a place where people can order gourmet gifts. Since then we have also found very good local brands and have started a discovery program for quality products.


• Q. How do you source featured products?
• What we realised is that when you walk into gourmet food stores, you often feel overwhelmed by the options. For instance, if you go looking for pasta, there will be dozens of pastas. We decided to curate products instead, so there are fewer options but of very good quality. We started by reaching out to importers who had good quality products with consistent supply. We also found many local brands that were too small and had trouble getting into the big box stores but were of very good quality. We have now carved a niche where many local brands reach out to us. We then do a lot of independent research before onboarding them.


• Q. What are some unique challenges of delivering food across the country?
• We use temperature controlled packaging for perishables and bubble wrap for glass. Delivery of fresh produce that is time and temperature sensitive is limited to Mumbai. We also use third party delivery channels like FedEx but have come to realise that these third party agents are not very careful with the packages and sometimes they can be all dumped together in a heap. To minimise damage we ensure everything we send out is very well packed. Very rarely have products arrived that are completely damaged and in those cases the customers reached out to us and we refunded or replaced items.


• Q. At what point did you introduce gourmet gift boxes?
• We started in mid 2013 with gourmet food subscriptions and gift boxes that we curated each month! People were repeating orders for some boxes, either as gifts or for personal use and we realised that the products we curated would be appreciated on their own as well. And that’s when we began retailing the products we were curating.


• Q. Any interesting requests or orders you’ve received that you’d care to share?
• Most purchases are from our website, but we customise boxes for all our corporate orders and each of them will have unique needs. One client wanted curated boxes for Women’s Day but they wanted wellness and spa related products as well. We are a gourmet food company but can include things like sheet masks, some sort of face packs or scented candles. Another client wanted boxes that also gave back to the community in some way so we included handmade diaries that were made by rural women and gift cards made with plantable seed paper.

Where Can You Find Them?

• Q. What are your own interests and how did you spend time during the lockdown?
• Janice: We are such foodies that even our spare time is spent in this pursuit! I love experimenting with recipes. During the lockdown we had a few weeks off but since we run an essential service we were back at work fairly soon. We spent sometime building a better website and honestly we were just pushing to get orders out as fast as we could.
  Himanshi: The time at home was often spent in food related activities. I experimented with recipes and pandemic specials like banana bread! I also got a little time to refocus on the business and operations, to give better service.


• Q. With your passion for food turning into work, do you still enjoy it as much?
• We still enjoy it. When we come to work we are like kids in a candy store! We get a lot of samples from companies looking to get onboard and we get to discover the best products. Everyone at the office loves food and we test out great ingredients, we are still so passionate about it!


• Q. Please tell us about one of your own memorable food stories.
• Janice: We had gone to try a Korean restaurant together just before the lockdown. It was a tiny hole-in-the-wall but had the most authentic and amazing Korean food. Ever since we have wanted to go back and try more of their food. One of my earlier food memories is about helping mom in the kitchen make lasagne sheets as they were not available back then. We had a lot of recipe books from across the world and would try and make things we had never tried before. By the time I was 8, I could make a meal with my mom’s help.
  Himanshi: I joined the party a little late. My food journey began when I went away from home to study. Eating out all the time was expensive and that pushed me and others to cook. I got to try so many dishes and discovered new ingredients.

• Vegan Cheese Dips: starting at ₹ 399.00 for a 275 gm jar.
• Flavoured Candy Floss: Starting at ₹ 70.00 for a 25 gm cup.
• Healthy Instant Noodles – Kung Pao & Tom Yum: Starting at ₹ 250.00 for a 207 gm pack.
• The Self-Care Gift Box: Starting at ₹ 2,000.00