Baking a fast food success story

Team L&M

It was during his college days that Jeevash Vaid got intrigued by the wide selection of Western food available at the grocery stores in Boston, USA. “I loved buying food at cost effective prices since my pocket money did not allow me to eat out regularly,” he says, adding that dreamt of a day when college students, professionals, homemaker and friends would enjoy easily available Western food at cost effective prices in India.

So Vaid took a loan and started Kuppies from a garage with the goal of providing best authentic Western foods in India. “Initially, we managed selling five cakes a month but we the numbers have touched the 5,00,000 cakes mark. Additionally, we sell 75,000 pizzas every month. But this is a result of a lot of hard work and passion as well as the blood and sweat of each team member. It took us years to be perfect but whatever we have achieved is based on the feedback of its customers,” feels Vaid who is fully supported in this venture by Uni Vaid. The two have a combined experience of three decades in the food industry. While Jeevash is a graduate from Boston College, US, Uni is a graduate from the Ivy League, University of Pennsylvania. Both have been franchisees of Subway Restaurants for over a decade and operated a bakery before they launched Kuppies.

As pioneers of authentic ready-to-eat Western food products in India, Jeevash and Uni are well-determined to alter this conviction through Kuppies which specializes in ambient, fresh (chilled) and frozen packaged foods prepared under world-class conditions. “If you are not acquainted with this emerging indigenous brand yet some of the Frozen Desserts range that treat your taste buds at all 1,700 stores of Café Coffee Day and 1,100 stores of Domino’s Pizza across India are from the house of Kuppies. Besides cost-effective brownies being the bestsellers among its ambient desserts, the top selling product of the brand is the Heat & Eat Pizza range, alongside pastas, calzones and other savory Italian ready-to-eat products.

“Our Heat & Eat Pizza range is a first-of-its-kind which gets crispy in a microwave in just three minutes. It took four years for our R&D team to develop a unique product,” says Jeevash. Kuppies’ modern35,000 sq ft factory possesses a daily production capacity of over five metric tonnes.  Amid everything that contributes to the magical savory, recipe is the forte of Kuppies’ products.  “All our recipes are built in-house through the collective efforts of trained chefs, food scientists and technologists. As a matter of fact, we have never hired an outside consultant to help guide with any of the Kuppies’ product recipes. This helps us in ensuring authenticity and unique taste of products,” says Uni.

Available in stores across Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, Kuppies has already devised broad plans for this year – to expand to smaller markets in Tier-2 & Tier-3 cities. It plans to widen its presence to all of the sales verticals including modern trade, general trade, online and Railways, be­sides starting its own food services division. “Our target is to be available in 5,000 stores across India by the end of 2019. We, the Kuppies family, are truly enjoying this unprecedented growth,” concludes Jeevash.