GRANT’S DESI ACHIEVER

IF IT TASTES LIKE HOME, IT FEELS LIKE HOME

Krish Shah, founder, TiffinStash.

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

In a classic illustration of necessity being the mother of invention, Krish Shah launched an initiative that is leading the next wave of food tech while bridging emotional gaps.

Shah came to Canada in 2014 from Vadodara in Gujarat, India. The international student, then in his early 20s, experienced all the familiar challenges of juggling academic requirements with survival jobs to help pay the bills.

“One has to be on top of assignments and projects while doing something to make sure the lights are on,” he says. “Culturally, I adapted easily – I was young enough! – and things were relatively smooth. But finding fresh, healthy home-cooked food was a challenge. I’m fairly independent and can cook for myself, but struggled to find the time to do so on a regular basis.”

And thus, when he was ready to launch his own business after graduating and learning the ropes of an e-commerce business, the choice was clear. A tiffin service that connects customers to a wide choice in ready-to-eat, home-cooked meals.

“People miss the comfort of familiar meals made with care, they crave something that feels like home, from someone who understands their pace of life and what real food means to them,” says Shah, the Founder and CEO of TiffinStash. “It’s also about the convenience. Lives are increasingly busy, most people don’t have the time to cook every day and don’t want to devote an entire weekend to cook ahead. Those that can afford to eat out every day often end up questioning the expense and also the effect on their health.”

Launched in 2021, TiffinStash is Toronto’s leading tiffin marketplace and Canada’s first curated marketplace for homestyle Indian tiffins. It became the first platform in Canada to help home-based chefs get licensed and to publicly list verified, hygiene-compliant home kitchens ensuring safety, dignity, and trust for all those who were doing this on an informal basis says Shah.

“Some are surprised to learn this but actually, aunties’ kitchens can be cleaner than your average restaurants! But if we have the slightest misgiving about one, or a less than positive feedback, we share it with them, give them the opportunity to fix things. If it doesn’t meet our standards, we let them go. It’s our reputation on the line. And we also see it as our moral duty to provide good, wholesome food.”

Shah shares the story of a customer who had been with them for over a year when he skipped a week.

“Customer service called to enquire why and if there was anything we could do. Turns out his microwave was busted – he got a new one and he’s back!”

As food delivery matures into a $75.8 billion market in North America consumer priorities are shifting from convenience to authentic, healthy, and the comfort of home meals, and Shah is seeing that reflected in the steady growth of his clientele over the last four years.

“That’s the best indicator, and I see the demand only growing,” he says. “It’s not a passing trend. More and more companies are also coming into this field and that’s a positive thing. They are growing the market, investing in money to educate people about the benefits of such a service.”

Not only does it help you save time, but it is also cost effective compared to buying groceries, he says, if one plans ahead. “People think cooking from scratch is the least expensive, and it is, but only if you plan well. I like to remind everyone that time is money! And yes, that’s the easy answer, but our tiffins typically cost $200 a month for a single person and $400 if you want a larger one, for a couple. Since each comes with rotis, rice, dal and a vegetable curry, I know people who do a roti-sabzi lunch and have the dal-rice for dinner – from one tiffin. You might spend more on groceries, spend the time getting to and back from the store and cooking, and then there’s also some wastage, stuff you didn’t use in time. And there are those who can’t cook.”

TiffinStash shares the same food space as other food delivery services, but those offer deliveries for restaurants.

“If you are hungry and want something right now, you can order from them, they have the logistics for that. With us, you place your order before 8 pm today for delivery tomorrow morning.”

A ‘trial tiffin’ costs between $12 and $16 – including delivery.

How is this different from the neighbourhood aunty’s dabba service?

The neighbourhood aunty is not their competitor, they are their partners, says Shah.

“Aunties deliver to their network, we can scale their business and deliver all over the GTA. We have brought them onto our platform.”

How does his enterprise differ from restaurants near college campuses which offer students coupons for monthly plans?

 “Smart work and hard work are obvious paths to success. But patience with yourself is very important.”

Here’s where the variety factor comes in. With 60-plus licensed seller listings providing a wide range of South Asian cuisines including Punjabi, Gujarati, Maharashtrian, Andhra and Kerala, customers are not limited to one type of food from one person. They have the flexibility to switch in the middle of a subscription, skip a delivery, upgrade, or downgrade.

Customers can do a Taste Drive with five different sellers over five days. They can do vegetarian-meat combos. They can mix and match cuisines.

“It’s clearly the reason why we are growing! It’s the complete North American customer service experience, which is not available with an unstructured tiffin service. I say this with complete respect for everyone who has worked hard to build a clientele, but people had to go to their WhatsApp or Kijiji groups to get a refund or make a change. We helped organize individual dabba services  into a seamless delivery, we guide vendors through onboarding.”

Delivery is also standardized with packing guidelines, ensuring there are no leakages, etc.

With suggestions from gym-goers who watch their calorie intake but don’t want to sacrifice on taste, TiffinStash recently introduced Healthy Meals, a new collection of high-protein, low-carb Indian and globally inspired healthy meal plans. Every dish is portion-controlled, higher in protein, and lighter on refined carbs.

While TiffinStash’s primary target audience is young professionals in the 25-45 age group, these are gaining in popularity with everyone from busy professionals, students, and clean eaters to fitness enthusiasts.

“We have people who order them for their parents in seniors’ or retirement residences who are missing a taste of home,” shares Shah. “These are specially meaningful to me personally and I have delivered many meals myself. We do a white glove delivery, make sure they get what they are looking for, and are happy.”

Built without venture capital, the platform runs on a tech-enabled, trust-first model that balances affordability and cultural authenticity.

He and the cofounders – his sister and his friend – put in their blood and sweat, says Shah. They made the deliveries themselves initially, putting in the gas with their own money and they didn’t pay themselves.

“We didn’t raise venture capital, but we raised something more powerful – trust. Customers trust us and pay the full monthly subscription up front. That helped us cover expenses by rolling payments.”

The team has now expanded to 15 with some customer service, sales and design work being done in India and Nigeria.

When someone asks him the secret of his success, Shah has a short response: Patience, smart work, hard work.

“Smart work and hard work are obvious paths to success, but patience with yourself is very important. For various reasons, we couldn’t launch during peak COVID as we’d have liked to. Looking back I think it was also for the best. I don’t know if we could have handled the surge in demand in our early stages. Or maybe we’d have done really well, planned our trajectory based on those numbers and then slumped as happened with several big businesses.”

He also points to the importance of learning how business works in Canada first instead of trying to start a business straight after college if they can’t find a job.

He gives his own example.

“I had worked for only about three months in India before moving to Canada, I learned everything here. You could say I grew up in the business environment here. Because of my experience in e-commerce, I was able to come up with the super-synced concept of a tiffin marketplace. Of course, you can succeed if you take the business path right after college but I feel you first need to learn how things and people work here. I know people who’ve started a business without getting the hang of basic concepts like HST and GST.

“I made mistakes too, sure, but I’d have made more if I hadn’t worked closely with the founders in a small company – instead of a smaller role in a large corporation. Take the time to learn, it pays off!”

Next on the menu for TiffinStash is expanding the line to include more cuisines and also expanding geographically, starting with Montreal.

“We get such positive feedback from clients. We’ve even had moms of our clients calling/emailing from India to thank us. No money, no success can beat that satisfaction.”

 For more information, visit www.tiffinstash.com or follow TiffinStash on Instagram.

 • Grant’s is proud to present this series about people who are making a difference in the community. Represented by PMA Canada (www.pmacanada.com).