Delivering food, and smiles, across the city

Nagpur: Narendra Jog made his decision. The bar he had been running for two years had caused him a loss of close to Rs4 lakh, a fat sum in 1993. He had lost money in the Harshad Mehta-triggered share market meltdown. He had broken his leg in an accident.
Jog decided to start anew.
With a few large utensils and gas stoves, the kitchen of his own home and a sum of not more than `6,000, Jog began a business.If you have ordered food over the phone in Nagpur, chances are you know the name of that venture. It is Dial For Food, the city’s first and, in all probability, most successful delivery-only food service.
Jog holds BCom and LLB degrees. He jokes that his training in cooking and hospitality was limited to helping his mother set the dinner table, cut the salad and roll a few chapattis as a kid. But he exudes a disarming can-do spirit. It was this fearlessness that helped him take the plunge into the catering business in 1988 when he ran the kitchen at Gondwana Club for a year. After having a stab at the liquor business for three years, he was back to make his way into people’s hearts through their stomach.
Jog started small, with one cook, one ‘bai’ to make chapattis and one delivery boy. “I would do all roles, even filling in for the cook when he would go on a long leave,” he remembers. Today, Jog’s huge Trimurti Nagar-based kitchen — an ISO-certified establishment with set processes to maintain hygiene, freshness and waste disposal — cranks out food for at least 1,000 people every day, through either Dial For Food or catering events. He has diversified into the hospitality sector and has established guest houses in the city. Work on his first restaurant is also underway. The business that started with `6,000 in 1993 has an annual turnover of `6 crore today.
Jog’s success has made him a role model: He gets invited to deliver talks on entrepreneurship. His tips? “Treat the customer as king and god. Never let a customer go. Never say no. Take whatever work comes along. Follow all laws. Always be honest. Take no shortcuts. Admit your mistakes. Make sure to stay healthy. Take care of your employees. Be punctual. Go out there in the market because your face must have recognizable value. Write a diary every night. Set targets. And always give something back to your community. Do things without profit motive because in the end you will profit from them,” he says. By following that last bit of advice, Jog has brought change in the lives of many Brahmins in need. He convinced 43 of his friends and associates, all of them well-to-do, to pool `2,000 every month. The `86,000 corpus is used for everything from funding someone’s cancer treatment to sponsoring college tuition to organizing a wedding. He is happy that he helped change the perception about caterers and brought respectability to the profession. “I earn money and people’s blessings as well. What more can I ask for,” he says.
Narendra Jog’s code is 11. To vote for him, type NPHR11 and send SMS to 58888