IHCL, chef Sanjeev Kapoor, Jose Andres offer meals to healthcare workers

When the pandemic struck in early 2020 upending lives, celebrity chef and philanthropist Sanjeev Kapoor along with this team decided to extend support to the healthcare professionals who were overwhelmed by the outbreak of the pandemic, by offering them freshly cooked delicious meals. But as the word spread and demand for the meals grew with many more hospitals requesting for it, Kapoor realised he needed a partner who can help in scaling up the initiative.

“I rang up Puneet Chhatwal (MD and CEO at Indian Hotels Co Ltd) whom I have known for many years and he immediately consented for the noble cause,” Kapoor told Business Standard. And the rest was history. When IHCL came on board the initiative took off on a much larger scale. IHCL brought Tata Trusts and many other donors into the picture to reach out to many more people. Kapoor together with TajSATS, IHCL’s airline catering brand, offered meals to over 3 million healthcare workers, all through the first wave of the pandemic.

The company had first begun the MealsToSmiles initiative on May 23, 2020 and stretched over five months of lockdown. This year, when the second wave struck, IHCL and Kapoor restarted the initiative. On Friday— IHCL and Kapoor had a special visitor, all the way from Washington---Chef Jose Andres, Founder of World Central Kitchen – a global non-profit organisation based out of Washington D.C.

“When I told “Jose Andres who is a friend that we want to extend the meals to other cities, he brought in WCK. Even before I could say anything, he hopped on to a flight and landed in Mumbai,” said Kapoor.

Kapoor and WCK have partnered with Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) for its MealsToSmiles initiative. Andres was in Mumbai during the weekend to visit the TajSATS kitchen. Along with Manish Gupta, Chief Executive Officer – TajSATS he joined the TajSATS team in the kitchen to assist in preparing the nutritious meal boxes, and delivering them to healthcare workers at the hospitals.

“WCK’s vision to use food to empower communities and strengthen economies has positively impacted millions of lives across the globe to date,” said Andres adding that he was humbled to be able to play a small role in India’s battle against the pandemic with the support of his partners in India – IHCL and Kapoor.

As on Sunday, IHCL has delivered over 475,000 meals to healthcare providers at 32 hospitals in eight cities across eight states including Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Goa, Hyderabad, Kolkata, New Delhi and Varanasi to date. “We are now looking to get into tier two cities and looking to scale this up in a big way,” said TajSAT’s Gupta adding that a wide network of IHCL hotel brands including Taj and Ginger has helped in executing the massive exercise. TajSats’ manpower and the resources to hygienically cook and pack a huge number of meals every day came in handy.

These meals are being delivered through the Taj Public Service Welfare Trust (TPSWT) and TajSATS – an IHCL company and India’s market leader in airline catering, in partnership with brands and individuals across the globe.