All of us are in a mad rush to cope up with the ever-changing dynamics of this world. With very little time in hand, people are now opting for services that will  deliver right at your doorstep with minimum effort on your part. Reshma Patel and her friends recognised this need and started Chef Express, a home delivery pizza service. "When we started in 1995, there was no one in the city offering home delivery especially for food," says Reshma

"Food is one field where the word of mouth is a very powerful source of information. If your services are good then the news spreads fast, and when your services fall short of expectations, it spreads faster. So we concentrated on building a very extensive client base with customer satisfaction as our primary priority," she says. Quality is the watchword and they tell the customer before hand that it will take 45minutes to an hour to deliver their order according to the distance to be traveled. As Reshma rightly points out, she does not know what happens after the food leaves the premises, the delivery boy could have vehicle problems or get stuck in a traffic jam. They have a specific area of delivery they cover which has been marked on their brochure. For places outside the marked territory they levy a nominal charge of Rs. 15-20. 

They also found out that Chinese cuisine is an all time favourite, so they decided to start Great Wall which "presents Chinese food at your door step." Great Wall has a very extensive menu which not only lists the usual Chinese fried rice and chopsuey, but also more of the tasty dishes like pepper chili mushroom, bonsai corn, szechuan paneer, etc. They also have a wide range of meat dishes ranging from the most common chili chicken to shredded lamb and prawns with bell pepper. Their soups and starters are equally impressive and will only be delivered with the main course and not separately. 

After the huge success of Great Wall they have now recently started Curry in a Hurry, a compendium of Indian cuisine. The menu has  been meticulously sectioned, so that the dishes from Konkan to Bengal are all covered. In each category, effort has been made to make sure that the vegetarians are not left out. They have a whole range of dishes from the Indian bread to different kinds of side dishes and rice that can make a very satisfying full course meal for the family. Their Sunday special is Biryani with a special side of baingan bhartha and raitha that is a treat fit for the royalty. 

All their foodstuffs are priced very competently and two people can easily share the portions. "We do not stock all the ingredients but prefer to buy on a day to day basis to maintain the freshness and the high quality standards," says Reshma. With a current average of 200-300 orders a day, these guys are definitely trailblazers in the field of home delivery.

Address: 
14A, Masilamani Street, 
T. Nagar, 
Chennai-17 
Phone: 4342839 / 4343772. 

Malini. S