Our restaurant Dabbawalla, a tribute to these incredible people of India, is a modern day eatery providing you with healthy eating and innovative cuisine based on the variety of tastes from the Indian subcontinent. Our aim is to change the common perception of Indian food as a ‘curry house’ by using the freshest ingredients and cooking in a healthy manner with the diversity of flavors of India.

The word Dabbawalla translates to dabba = lunch box and walla = man…or the ‘lunch box man’. It is a 125 year old trade formed by a unique and incredible network of 5,000 men with the complex task of delivering 200,000 home made lunches each day from suburban homes to down town offices in the city of Mumbai…all within a period of approx. 3 hours! That’s approx 65 million ‘dabbas’ a year with almost no mistakes!

Dabbawallas are largely illiterate rural workers who use nothing more than 3 – 4 symbols crudely painted on their dabbas to create an unparalleled food supply chain by using their remarkable intuition , teamwork and values in contrast to the very sophisticated computerized decision making telecommunication systems costing millions of dollars in the West today.

Heres how the system works:
-The first dabbawalla picks up the dabba from a home and takes it to the nearest railway station.
-The second dabbawalla sorts out the dabbas at the railway station according to destination and puts them in the luggage carrier.
-The third one travels with the dabbas to the railway stations nearest to the destinations.
-The forth one picks up dabbas from the railway station and drops them to each individuals office.
-The process is reversed in the evenings with each dabba completing a distance of 60 – 70 kms and changing hands 8 times!
-Customers pay about $5/month for this service.