Haleem spices up the food business

Across the world, the month of Ramzan is a time for fasting, contemplation and prayer. But in Hyderabad, it is also a ₹ 500-crore business venture. Through haleem, the thick spicy meat dish with the texture of a porridge is a rage during the season with demand outstripping supply in the city.

In the evening, a 5-km stretch of Old Mumbai Highway is an unpassable traffic gridlock as patrons descend in droves, some having driven 30-40 km to get the haleem. Young IT workers jostle as they try to get a token for a bowl of brownish haleem with a sprig of mint and a quartered lemon coated generously with a floating layer of ghee.

Muhammad Rabbani, the owner of Shah Ghouse Cafe, and his son juggle the tokens from delivery boys of Swiggy, Zomato and Uber Eats who flash codes on their cellphones and pick up orders. Sometimes, the delivery boys employed by the restaurant for take away orders outnumber the waiters.

Rising fortunes

“In 1989, I started a small stall of haleem in Ghouse Cafe in the Yakutpura area of Hyderabad, but suffered losses. In 1998, I started Shah Ghouse in Shahalibanda and my fortune turned,” says Mr. Rabbani as he supervises the workers, the sale and the logistics of transporting the dish from a vast kitchen that is a wedding function hall which he has hired for the month.

“The cooking starts at 4 a.m. and it doesn’t stop till midnight. The patronage is like this till 1 a.m.,” he says, surveying the sea of people waiting to get inside the four-storeyed restaurant. During the season, the restaurant employs about 1,000 workers from all parts of the country.

How this haleem industry has created thousands of jobs can be seen inside the pre-cooking work site of Pista House. Students pursuing MBBS, MBA and Engineering pitch in and work with barely literate butchers and muscle men who haul bags of grain and slaughtered goats. “I came from Nagpur in 2009 and started as a waiter after learning about this one-month job opportunity. I come here to work every year and now I am pursuing my MBA from Pune,” says Akshay Katra, who handles the packaging logistics and the IT end of delivery.

Muhammad Ishraq Ibrahim, who is a first year Engineering student, runs errands, keeps the count of boxes and deliverables.

It is at the pre-cooking workshop of Pista House that the scale of operations becomes apparent as owner Muhammad Majeed issues orders on a hailer inside the rented function hall.

A row of butchers armed with cleavers and knives wait for the orders before they spring into action dicing, cutting and cleaning. “Cut it small. Remove the fat. Our haleem has to be the best,” he hollers like a coxswain of a rowing team.

As many as 200 butchers are employed by Pista House at Chengicherla abbattoir which begins functioning at 11 pm at night. On a different table, the chef Pasha creates the blended spice mix that goes into each cauldron.

Secret mix

The measurement is not by the spoon or in grams but with vessels used in the construction industry. Each pan-full of spices is a secret mix including rose petals, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, salt and other ingredients goes into each cauldron of haleem which is then brewed for five hours.

“The goats are brought from surrounding areas as well as other parts of the country including from Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka,” says Mr. Rabbani.

On an average, about 3,500 goats are used every day to make haleem, and based on the retail price of the food, the industry is worth about ₹500 crore.

Some of the credit for creating the haleem brand has to go to Mr. Majeed who innovated the dish by using a postal service and a courier service to serve Mumbai and Delhi before the delivery apps arrived. He also lobbied to get the Geographical Indication Tag that has created uniqueness for the dish. Haleem is either considered a Persian or Arabic breakfast dish cooked overnight or a dish cooked through the day for people on fast but has been tweaked to meet the spiciness quotient of the Indian palate.

While the big players have carved up the upper end of the haleem lovers, there are hundreds of other small operators getting into fray and trying their fortunes. After all two small haleem players made it big, and they can also hope to do so.