Hyderabad: Satiating sweet tooth during Covid times

Hyderabad: Under lockdown, people had tough time not satiating their pangs for a variety of cakes. Many relied upon home delivery services mostly run by individuals from their homes. Home bakers thus made it possible for locals to provide them with customised, hygienic and quality ingredients products to make their special day a memorable day even during the pandemic. The past three months of the pandemic have led to a high demand of home-baked products in the city. The cost of these home-baked cakes ranges from Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000 based on the designs.

Speaking to The Hans India, Agrima Asthana, founder of Cake o'clock Hyderabad who along with her mother has been in this business for the last four years, said, "We bake drip cakes, tall cakes, customised cakes, photo collage cake, doughnuts, chocolates and macrons. The demand of homemade cakes and doughnuts has increased as they are homemade, fresh and hygienic. Apart from the customers that we already had, there was an increase of around 60% of new customers. The demand of drip cakes and the regular cakes were ordered maximum in these days."

Meanwhile, with not much celebrations of birthdays and anniversaries, the few home bakers also saw slump in the quantity of cakes ordered. Speaking about the same, Neha Sisodia, founder of Flavoroso, Kondapur, said, "We are more into baking customised cakes and cupcakes. The demand was the same but the quantity decreased. Before lockdown I used to get orders for 3 to 4 kg cakes but during lockdown it dropped to 1 kg as there were no gatherings. During the initial days the orders were zero. However, there was a rise of 20 per cent of new customers from the nearby societies. People who did not have any celebrations sought normal and smaller cakes."

Raw materials & delivery

Getting the required raw materials to make the cakes and cupcakes was a huge task for them to manage. With no online delivery apps working during the pandemic, home bakers requested their customers to personally pick their orders. Agrima says, "There was lack of raw materials available in the market, due to which, we searched some similar alternatives and took the customers approval for the same. Personal pick-up was the safest option for both the clients and for us. However, now we are delivering the order through whizzy and Uber."

"At the beginning there were no raw material and it was very difficult to get them as the shops were closed. Now, all is getting back to normal in terms of availability of goods. Our work also got affected because for 2 months we did not get proper orders, apart from people of our society members," adds Neha.

Precautionary measures

According to Agrima and Neha, though they have been baking home-made cakes, raw materials are brought from markets which need to be properly sanitised. They said that before using the raw materials and utensils.

Meanwhile, there are also home bakers who baked only for family, friends and few regular clients and decided not to take any outside orders considering everyone's safety. Aishwarya Gollapudi, Dolce Vita Cakery in Masabtank, who has been in this business since 2013, said, "there were calls and enquiries almost every day. However I considered everyone's safety and encouraged clients to bake it themselves. There was shortage of ingredients, as the supply chain was disrupted. It became impossible to bake even for my family. I had to tweak the recipes to manage the lack of ingredients. Since yeast was not available, so all the bread and loafs were baked without it. The demand was really high however could not cater to it hence the business came to stand still. For those whom we baked, they had to pick their orders. e10. We used masks, disposable gloves, aprons and also encouraged clients to bake at home."

Meanwhile, with plenty of time and help from kin at their disposal, households too took to baking their own favourites. Social media spawned a whole breed of them, with many flaunting their newly acquired skills of making yummy delicacies.