Food & Dining: Tiffin Time in Metro Atlanta
Dabbahwala brings fresh Indian meals to your doorstep
On the streets of Mumbai, about 200,000 stacked dabbas (stainless steel tiffin boxes) are delivered daily by about 5000 “dabbawalas”. They pick up the freshly made lunches from homes and travel by train, rickshaw, or cycle, to deliver them to the offices and businesses that they are meant for. Despite the logistical challenge of dozens, if not hundreds, of tiffins handled by each dabbawala, across several suburbs of Mumbai, each hot lunch is miraculously delivered to its rightful owner. How such a complicated spider web of a delivery network works every single time, especially without modern technology like computers, GPS, and smartphones, is a wonderment that has famously been studied as a Six Sigma case study.
Videshi dabbawalas
In the U.S., those hankering for the hot daal-sabzi-roti meals daily have been willing to go to required lengths to make it happen. My brother-in-law in Mississauga, Canada, has even given his condominium keys to the lady who prepares desi meals for him while he is out at work.
Entrepreneurs are stepping in. My friends in New Jersey use CookUnity, a platform through which home-based chefs (often homemakers) set up a menu for the week and deliver crafted meals to their subscribers within the neighborhoods. In Atlanta, this concept is still harder to find. I only know of a few households who source a home chef to come and cook Indian meals for the week or for a big gathering. I imagine that in a city where neighborhoods stretch from Alpharetta to Peachtree City and from Conyers to Douglasville, it’s not practical to travel long distances and deliver freshly-made tiffins each day.
But then I found Dabbahwala, an Indian food delivery service that started in metro Atlanta in January 2025. People can pick and choose their meals and sides from a menu that rotates daily. The menu is published on their website two weeks in advance. One can order for the week or pick certain days for the food to be delivered. There are options for picking morning or evening delivery times, or both. Moreover, delivery is free with a minimum of $75 of food purchased in a week.
[Right] Dal Tadka
Modern Dabbas
The Dabbahwala who arrived at my door, unlike his Indian counterpart, had no Nehru cap or bicycle; he drove a car and wore jeans and a hoodie. He carried a large recyclable box that mimicked a lunchbox with a handle. The food was warm and fresh. Each of the curries, rice dishes, roti, and sweets was placed in biodegradable containers, which were far better than the plastic or Styrofoam ones. Each food item was packed separately so as not to spill or mix.
There was a generous portion of Hyderabad-style chicken dum biryani. The flavors were robust, just like you would find in Hyderabad, and cooked with ghee instead of oil. The dal tadka was light and healthy, with added spinach, just the way I often do myself. The chicken curry was cooked South Indian style with fresh curry leaves and green chilies. I particularly enjoyed the simply prepared north Indian style rajma, a staple lunch at my home in Punjab. The vegetarian fried rice, full of carrots, peas, and other vegetables, wasn’t oily. The thin wheat rotis wrapped in paper needed to be heated and roasted further. I like my rotis a little fluffy and evenly cooked.
For dessert, I tried a few different ones over a few days, though you don’t necessarily need to add a sweet item to your order, as there are no pre-packaged combos. The gulab jamun, beetroot halwa, gajar ka halwa, dry fruit laddu, and coconut barfi all tasted like homemade and weren’t overly sweet. I also had a choice of adding white rice, yogurt, tomato pickle, and coconut chutney to round up my meal, which I occasionally did.
[Left] Mint Rice
The portions were quite generous, so I had to adjust my future orders to my appetite. A 12-oz container of vegetables with two rotis was enough for lunch, and an order of chicken biryani served at least two people. This made eating a well-balanced Indian meal each day quite affordable. Dabbahwala charges only $5 for a 12-oz container of vegetable curry, as opposed to $14.99 for daal makhni from an Indian restaurant near me. Also, the food is prepared fresh without harsh cooking oils, colors, and creams. It comes close to eating home-cooked food without having to labor in the kitchen for several hours.
Meeting demands of a busy American lifestyle
That was the very intent of Dabbahwala founder, Mahesh Vidiyala, who migrated from Hyderabad to the United States to pursue a master’s degree in computer science. “I craved simple home-style daal, aloo sabzi, and okra that I could not find at Indian restaurants,” says Vidiyala, who is now an IT executive. He generally avoids feeding his family deep-fried snacks and cream-rich curries.
Seeing that his friends also preferred such a style of cooking but were too busy to cook themselves, he saw a business opportunity to provide skilled and licensed home-cooked Indian delivery services. He built a kitchen in Norcross where a handful of chefs prepare Indian specialty dishes from scratch, while a team of drivers deliver approximately 100 meals to homes and offices each day, covering a broad geographic reach from Cumming to Midtown Atlanta.
[Right] Food is delivered in eco-friendly packing.
Vidiyala tells me that the majority of his clients order food on weekdays, when they are busy running around between the office, gym, and taking their kids to extracurricular activities. The busy working professionals enjoy the convenience of getting food delivered to their doorstep and the flexibility of picking and choosing exactly what they want to eat each day.
For Vidiyala, Dabbahwalla is more than just a food business. It’s his way to give back to the community.
He wants people to be able to “focus on themself, spend time with kids, and do the things they want to do instead of spending two hours in the kitchen chopp-ing, cooking and cleaning dishes every day.”. With each tiffin delivery, Dabbahwala is expanding its reach to other parts of the U.S. The food is already a hit, but whether their logistics challenges of operating in the suburbs merit a case study remains to be seen.
Sucheta Rawal is an award-winning food and travel writer who has traveled to over 120 countries across seven continents, experiencing the world through her palate. She inspires people to travel more meaningfully and sustainably through her nonprofit, Go Eat Give, and her books, Beato Goes To. Find her on social @SuchetaRawal.
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