I was strolling down the lanes of an upcoming Bangalore suburb when I came across a stall run by two women selling food items. They were very well dressed and if they stood in a crowd, no one could pick them apart from the regular IT crowd in Bangalore. And the surprising part is that they are IT Professionals. Well, atleast one of them still is while the other quit her job 3 years ago.
The two women in question are Cheryl George and Divya Anne Joseph who both were in their typical IT jobs when they felt this pang to do something more. Acting on their gut, they decided to work to their strength which was cooking and setup a stall outside their building in February 2013. Their friend Anto Roy also joined them with the endeavor. They tried the mobile stall concept to begin with but half of their day went in just explaining what they were doing and they weren’t seeing many returns. Hence they decided to stick to one place and setup the stall outside their building.
They have a Facebook Page where they update the menu (usually snacks and light dinner items) and stand on the streets, alongside the coconut vendor and others to sell their items. And it’s not something they did for a few weeks. The team of three have persisted and it’s been more than 6 months now where they stand out (in all weathers) and take in the joy of serving. “We’re not doing this for money or to build a grand business, we’re doing it for the joy we get out of it,” says Cheryl.
The ladies cook at their home and the three of them then bring the items to the stall in their cars. Anto Roy handles the other stall and the two stall together are serving around 80-90 customers every day. They call themselves ‘Street Eats’ and their average ticket size is around INR 50.
Divya is into this fulltime while Cheryl still holds her job. They don’t have immediate plans to scale and formalize but are taking it as it comes. “We’re really enjoying what we are doing and the kind of people we’re meeting everyday is just phenomenal!” says the team in chorus.
This is the kind of spirit that thrills us here at YourStory and gives us the motivation to go out there discover more such interesting people. Follow StreetXEats on Facebook.
source: http://www.yourstory.in / Your Story / Home / by Jubin Mehta / August 10th, 2013