Surviving a Pandemic and Achieving Business Growth – From the Experience of a Vadodara-based Food Startup

Vadodara, Gujarat, India | 14^th January 2021: Succeeding in business in the middle of a global pandemic is not an easy task. The whole world experienced the truth in 2020. Everything we thought normal came to a sudden halt. Many companies had to shut down operations or cut down businesses overnight. Ordinary people lost livelihoods; societies receded to home confinement with bulging health concerns.
 
A Vadodara-based food startup has managed to overcome the pandemic blues and achieved 10 times business growth, even, in such a challenging time. It took quite a few well-timed business decisions and product launches.
 
For over ten months, lockdown forced people to stay confined in their homes, while restaurants and food joints remained closed. Food being an obvious choice to spice up our lives, everyone started experimenting and attempting to home-cook restaurant-styled dishes. Ordinary people – food lovers, bachelors, mothers, or rookie cooks – was striving to be home chefs.
 
All That Dips leveraged people’s crave for healthy, nutritious and restaurant-style delicious food at home. They launched their new product line up Bechef. It is a brand of gourmet cooking sauces from cuisines across the world; prepared with farm-fresh ingredients; no colour, flavour or harmful chemical added.
 
“Food is a sacred business, what we consume has a direct effect on the health of the consumer and hence there lies no room for error and use of inferior quality ingredients on what goes in our products.” – Dr. Deep Lodhari, Founder & Director of All That Dips
 
Bechef cooking sauces come in various world cuisines, from North African Harissa Sauce to Jamaican Jerk Sauce and Chinese Kung Pao Sauce. The company strictly adhere to the principle of quality over quantity. Only farm-fresh ingredients, directly sourced from farmers markets, are used in preparing Bechef sauces. Production of sauces in small batches ensures that ingredients remain fresh and authentic. Products also taste uniform, and nutrient value remains intact.
 
Bechef cooking sauces are now available in more than 1000 supermarkets across 13 Indian states contributing over 50% to All That Dips revenue. The company has a pan-India reach–Panjab to Kerala and Gujrat to Assam. All That Dips gets direct-to-customer business from its presence in online platforms and business-to-business sales from traditional distributions and modern trade format. They also bulk-supply products to various restaurants, caterers and hotels. The word-of-mouth publicity and reorders from satisfied customers, significantly, helped the brand to succeed.
 
For promoting Bechef brand, All That Dips is teaming up with the best chefs in India, engaging consumers through social media interactions, regular online cooking contests and other fun, engaging activities. Sampling and tasting activities in retail stores, malls and societies are also in full swing. The founders have plans to go international by launching the brand in South East Asian and Middle East Markets soon.
 
All That Dips’ goal for 2021 is to be the fastest-growing company in the healthy foods and condiments category consolidating its presence across the territories in Tier 1, 2 and 3 cities and becoming a national brand.
 
All That Dips’ story had its beginning in 2017 when Dr. Deep Lodhari and Mr. Dhaval Patel prepared a special batch of Hummus & Fresh Salsa and sold worth of Rs 50,000/- within just two days in a local market! Both these gentlemen share craziness and passion for good food from across the world; they believe that good food can change the way of life. The initial success with Hummus gave birth to All That Dips. In a short period, the company became a big success. It started supplying fresh dips ranging from Fresh Hummus, Salsa, Guacamole, Cheese Dips, Aiolis and Yogurt in 16 yummy flavours to premium supermarkets across five states. Then covid-19 happened. And their thriving business got stuck with lockdown, closed stores and supermarkets. However, the ingenuity and entrepreneurial zeal helped the company to overcome the pandemic onslaught. All That Dips launched its gourmet cooking sauce brand Bechef for people willing to home-cook delicious healthy restaurant-styles dishes.