There were times when you had to walk miles to fight your hunger and get a plate of food. The rise of technology has completely changed the game today. Now people can easily order their favorite cuisines just with a single touch on their devices and the food will be at your doorsteps. There are numerous online food portals operating in the valley but Foodmario is identically different from the rest. It has a new vision of connecting home cooks with customers. Unlike, normal online food portals Foodmario delivers homemade foods at your doorsteps. With Foodmario, home entrepreneurs can showcase their healthy, home-cooked fares, tweak their recipes on the basis of feedback received and grow their market. Foodmario is not just another platform that merely sells food; It seeks to create communities that come together to socialize over food and empower each other. The best part of the portal is that it doesn’t have minimum order and delivery charge. Even if you order food of Rs. 100, they will deliver it without any charge. 

Story behind its establishment 
Foodmario officially started its journey in 2017 with a vision to provide equal opportunity to everyone who have passion and skill to cook food. Talking about the inspiration behind its establishment, Founder and CEO, Rohit Tiwari says, “Before the formal establishment of Foodmario, I had involved myself in different business including solar company and air Purifier Company but I thought of doing something since I was not satisfied. Finally, in 2017 I met my mentor, Ananta Saurabh. We then discussed about how we could change value of food delivery industry in the country.” He adds, “Online food delivery portals are gaining enormous popularity globally. So we decided to do something new in this field and   ended up with the idea of becoming a bridge between the costumers and home chef.” 

Tiwari thinks that there are numerous capable people in the city who are not getting the right platform. Economic and social empowerment of home chef is the main vision of food Mario. Tiwari attributed his mom for the inspiration behind Foodmario. He said, “I just couldn’t imagine a cook other than my mom. She cooks food for me every single day and she has been doing this for me for the last 26 years. Moreover, she has a steady experience of almost 40-45 years in cooking. Now we had to provide her a platform for everyone like her to cook and sell.” 

Challenges
Business is a complete package of challenges. You have to face different challenges while developing business. Earlier, people were not aware about the benefits of homemade foods and in case they had some idea, they weren’t yet familiarized with online food delivery portal. So, making people aware about the existence of homemade food delivery portal and maintaining the quality and hygiene of the food are the challenges that the venture had to face during its nascent stage. 

Tiwari said, “Connecting chef with costumers and delivering fresh and hot food on time are the greatest challenge that we are facing till date.” The venture increased the number of home chef to minimize delivering time. When asked “In spite of a heavy traffic, how do you manage maintaining temperature and freshness of the food?”  Tiwari said, “Our delivery staffs use bikes to minimize the delivery time and foods are packed in aluminum or special plastic boxes to maintain both the freshness and hotness of the food.” 

How does it work? 
Costumers of Foodmario can place their orders through the official website of Foodmario, direct message on social media or via phone calls. After receiving orders, costumer care informs home chef about the order. Details like the delivery location and the orders are informed. Then the food is delivered to the costumers. Currently, there are more than 40 home cooks working in affiliation with Foodmario. There are certain protocols that home cooks have to follow in order to work with Foodmario. The protocols include fundamental rule of cooking like having clean kitchen, using quality ingredients, using gloves and hat while cooking and so on. 

Foodmario makes sure that home cooks are following these protocols. They have hired different staffs to monitor their kitchens on a regular basis. Foodmario delivers food within 1 to 1.25 hours. Discussing on the perks of using Foodmario, Tiwari said, “With Foodmario you get to taste real food that has soul to it.  It’s not the commercial kitchen food. And with every purchase you empower a home based chef, creating a major impact on the society.” 

Future plans 
Currently, the services of Foodmario are limited to Kathmandu only. But now the venture is looking forward to expansion via operating outlets in some of the major cities if the country. This is a plan they are trying to complete within this fiscal year. Likewise, Tiwari is planning to eradicate one of the biggest challenges of Foodmario; Connecting nearest cook with the customers and for that Tiwari is all set to launch a Foodmario digital app until December, 2018.  During the conversation with Republica, Tiwari revealed that after expanding his business all across the country he will extend his business   abroad as well. Likewise, currently Foodmario receives 250 to 300 orders and founder is planning to increase the orders to 3,000.