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Over the past few decades, a woman has donned multiple hats. Between managing work at the office and the chores at home, her productivity has been north-bound. Among the plethora of home-chores, she neatly manages a food manufacturing assembly line, a food court and a super market right at her home
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Like her yesteryears' counterparts, the home-maker today dons the cap of a chef - dishing out delicacies from around the world. She also acts as a retailer, continuously keeping track of her kitchen inventory and ensuring fill rates are never compromised. She has got a family to feed - a family with a wide range of eclectic choices. Mind you, one day she will be looking at a home menu card with a list of choices that is longer than the one at the food court in a mall near her home.
In all this, she has to prove she is no longer your average mom who simply cooks great food. She is now a factory manager who produces a wide variety of cuisine using ingredients that were only to be found in 'foreign cook books' until recently. She has also mastered the use of a range of gadgets such as the grinder-mixer-blender, the conduction-convection-microwave oven, grill, toaster and the steamer. All this apart from ensuring that her shelves are always filled up with a multitude of ingredients that reflect her and her family's ever growing appetite for world cuisine.
Indeed, kitchen shelves now resemble a supermarket shelf. Today's homemaker has multiple options in blended spices, herbs, seasonings, cooking pastes, fruit crushes, syrups, powdered spices, dry chutneys... the list is vast and there are new additions every other day.
Even if food is prepared by the domestic help, the housewife/mother releases it with her stamp of approval to the family. From being an executive who earlier would do it herself, she has taken the role of a multitasking home manager taking accountability of the new responsibilities.
Let us see what happens in the Ray household. The traditional fish curry and rice make guest appearances during weekends. Throughout the week, Ms Ray ensures there's a big spread to cater to the nutrition needs of the three-member family. While Mr Ray has his fill of muesli with cold milk and banana for breakfast every day, their daughter has to have different things on different days of the week. So it is whole wheat bread with Nutella one morning; weetabix with cut fruits the next; upma on another day, followed by quickly tossed pasta. Ms Ray goes with bran enriched flakes thrice a week; on other days fruits and a toast or porridge. And that's only breakfast. Lunch and dinner are two new and distinct chapters altogether.
As you can see, the food court outside the mall has moved on to the dining table in Ms Ray's home. Consequently, the kitchen shelves and cabinets have started resembling the shelves at the supermarkets. This trend has given rise to modular kitchens with endless storage options.
Along with this proliferation of intermediate products and solutions, another quiet but gradual change that the kitchen has witnessed is of the frequent upgrades of kitchen appliances. The refrigerator of today is a multi-chambered, humidity-controlled, odour-controlled white - or even red or black - behemoth that promises a million things. So does the plain old mixer that now has half a dozen attachments.
Other gadgets that have made steady inroads are OTGs, microwaves, electric burners, blenders, juicers, coffee makers, rice cookers, idli steamers toasters etc. Is that a food factory we are looking at? Of course.
The lady of the household till the 1990s had limited choice if she wanted to introduce variety on the table. Today she has unlimited options and prefers to retains her role of "annapoorna" (she who satiates hunger or provides food). The freedom of choice that family members exercised when they ate out, has percolated down to the home. From a standard choice of meals a couple of decades ago, the family today eats together, but eats a variety.
Modern trade is leading category creation and providing its customers sweeping choices across product categories. The last decade saw the supermarket shelves populated with multiple options in 'total' food. A whole lot of ethnic foods and intermediaries that had otherwise disappeared from the menus of the nuclear homes, made appearances on the shelves all over again. So, now Ms Ray in Delhi gets her granny's mustard sauce (kasundi) in a nicely labelled bottle, and Ms Shah in Ahmedabad stocks up on vacuum packed khakra to be had/offered to her family with evening chai.
It is not difficult to think of a future when she will have smart intermediates like pre-soaked pulses and black-eyed beans, red kidney beans etc that can be cooked straight-away without much preparation; she might also have the option of buying pre-marinated paneer cubes, frozen basic gravies that would require some last-mile spicing up to arrive at a delectable home-cooked dish.
These solutions have made the housewife experiment in the kitchen and her family to be adventurous in cuisine trials. The coming revolution in processed foods is going to lead to maximum category creation. The home manager has shown she is more than ready to take it on; the challenge is for brands to figure out where they can add value and move their products up the value chain.
The 'maa ke hath ka khana' is supreme and brands that make her life easier and travel to the kitchen but still await her final touches to proceed to the dining table will find favour. She is the queen of the house and the credit for preparing the menl has to go to her and not to the brand. For brands, the measure of success will be calculated on the sacrifice they make on the frying pan.
Devendra Chawla
President, Food Bazaar Business, Future group
