A Kiwi-Indian mum-daughter food business – Sobhna's - which makes Indian curry pastes and spice blends, is hoping to get popular votes from the members of the community for Coast People's Choice Award in the Outstanding NZ Food Producer Awards 2021.
The awards have fast gained the reputation – within five years of its inception since 2017 - of being the best of the country's locally grown and made food and drink products.
Nimeesha Odedra, the daughter and the co-founder of Sobhna's, told the Indian Weekender that they were inspired by their solid customer base to enter into the Outstanding NZ Food Producers awards for this year.
"From my understanding, no Indian food business has ever won a gold award or the Coast People's Choice Award in this competition, and we are determined to change this.
"We think it is really important for our community to have our businesses pushing boundaries and winning awards," Nimeesha said.
Sharing the inspiring journey of how Sobhna's first came into existence which was out of compulsion, Nimeesha said, "Seventeen years ago my mum gave up her job to help me bring up my son when my marriage fell apart so that I could carry on in my career. When my son was old enough to go to school, my mum found herself locked out of the job market due to her age."
"But she never gave up, and this is how Sobhna's began," Nimeesha said.
"Initially, she started making vegetarian samosa and pakora to sell at the local farmers' markets. These were really popular, and often she would sell around 500 plus samosa in the space of 3-4 hours. My mum has an amazing personality and loves meeting and talking to people and so she developed some amazing relationships. Over time she added spring rolls to her menu.
The other popular product line of the business – Indian curry pastes – also emanated out of compulsion from another crisis.
"In December 2019, my mum damaged her shoulder, and it was really difficult for her to carry on making samosa from scratch. Especially the pastry, which is very difficult. So, we shifted focus to the curry pastes range, which our regular customers are quite liking," Nimeesha said.
The 2020 lockdown brought more challenges, forcing the mum-daughter duo to innovate further and adapt.
"During the first lockdown, the business couldn't trade at all. To keep my mum busy and to have some fun with our Facebook followers (approx. 200), we started making short cooking video tutorials. After five weeks, our followers went up and up, and at the end of lockdown, we were sitting at 1200 followers.
"When we hit Alert Level 3, we started getting orders for the curry paste. I had to literally drive all over Auckland to deliver curry pastes because we had no courier system set up.
"It took us a few weeks to find a supplier of packaging, get a courier and just find our feet," Nimeesha said.
Recalling the whole experience of managing and running this small food business in 2020, which has seen many established businesses go down, Nimeesha said, "The last several months have been a rollercoaster ride. We now have a website, over 8000 followers on Facebook and a range of products."
Speaking about the motivation behind entering into this popular award category Nimeesha said, "This is the first time ever that we have entered our products for any Food Awards. I think when you look at food awards in New Zealand, there often isn't much diversity. We really want to aim high with our business and showcase authentic, healthy Indian food to the world.
"We think it's really important that our community pushes these boundaries and showcases our culture and value by entering and winning these awards. In our case, we may not win because at this stage we are only a small mother-daughter business; however, we will have showcased our products, and more people will know about us and the ethos behind our business."
"This would be a total game-changer for us and would really help showcase healthy authentic Indian food," Nimeesha said with a glimmer of hope in her eyes.
(Here is the link to vote for mum-daughter duo : tinyurl.com/qpzxchwu)
(You only need to put Sobhna's as your favourite producer (the farmers market is optional)
ISSUE
Leave a Comment