CULINARY ENTREPRENEURS, LAUNCH OF FEA’S MAGAZINE FOR THE FOOD AND HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY WITH INDUSTRY-RELATED DISCUSSIONS
Culinary Entrepreneurs was launched with a webinar on business opportunities by FEA, a group of food entrepreneurs.The Magazine was launched on 18th May 2021.
Dilip Thakkar, one of the FEA Group Admin, opened the webinar remembering entrepreneur, photographer and blogger Akkashh Chaudhary, a very active FEA member who was always there for FEA events. A 30 second prayer was played by Darshan Rawal, the moderator for the event, in memory of members or their family members who have lost their lives in the Pandemic situation.
Anil Mulchandani, Editor of Culinary Entrepreneurs magazine, said the idea of a magazine for the food service industry occurred to him when working with Ankita J. Sharma on developing content for Feamag.com, the website of FEA. Together they decided to work on making a Mother’s Day Special edition of a magazine.
Following the good response, the FEA admins decided to move ahead with another edition. Since the work on this magazine was happening during the World Environment Day period, it was decided to theme this on sustainable hospitality covering wide-ranging subjects like eco-friendly green hotels, energy-efficient lighting for hotels and restaurants, zero-waste recipes and the growing use of local vegetables and grains in restaurants.
The RNI-registered CULINARY ENTREPRENEURS magazine is themed on the rising trend of Home Chefs and Homestays after the Lockdown. Anil Mulchandani interviewed owners of heritage homes on how the royal recipes of Maharajas and Nawabs can now be enjoyed by guests staying at their properties. Ankita J Sharma spoke to home chefs from Chandigarh, Chennai, Jaipur, Pune, Delhi, Bengaluru and other cities about their specialities. There are articles about equipment for home chefs and cloud kitchens, how an institute is training home bakers and how to use Canadian agri-food products in the Indian kitchen.
Speaking at the programme, Vishal Kumar Dev, IAS, Principal Secretary – Tourism, Sports and Youth Services, Government of Odisha, congratulated FEA on launching the magazine. He said that Odisha has long been known to tourists as a Temple State but it has a gamut of offerings for travellers like archaeological sites, lakes, hills, ecotourism hotspots, textiles and handicrafts, tribal culture, cuisines and so forth. Talking about Sujata Dehury’s article about the eco-retreat initiative, he said, “Tourism Development is a priority sector for Odisha. Through the Eco-Retreat initiative, we want to highlight and showcase some of the hidden gems of the state. The state has many ecotourism destinations. Chilika Lake is among the largest of its kind in Asia and one of the top places for birds. Olive ridley sea turtles migrate in huge numbers from the beginning of November, every year, for mating and nesting along the coast of Odisha. This is one of the largest such turtle nesting sites in the world’’.
He proudly talked about how Odisha has emerged as one of the hottest investment destinations for new projects and is highly-ranked for Ease of Doing Business. “The incentives for new projects in tourism and hospitality are mainly in the area of capital subsidy,’’ he explained.
Jenu Devan, Commissioner and Managing Director, Tourism, Government of Gujarat, also congratulated FEA on the launch of the magazine and appreciated the article on the royal food of Gujarat’s heritage hotels. “Gujarat has launched attractive policies for Heritage Tourism and Homestays, which offer incentives for those investing in these subsets of tourism’’, he said, adding, “ the new Tourism Policy also looks at new avenues like caravan tourism, MICE (meetings, incentives, conferencing, exhibitions) tourism and rural-based experience tourism. High priority tourism centres have been identified across 25 districts of the state’’.
Akhil Choudhary, Trade Commissioner – Food and Agriculture at Canada High Commission, talked about Canada’s agri-food products like canola oil, maple syrup, blueberries, cherries and salmon. Canada is among the large exporters of agricultural and agri-food products in the world. India is a potential market for many of Canada’s agri-foods. He stressed on the health benefits of many of these foods.
His talk was followed by Chef Michael Swamy’s video about the use of Canada’s agri food products in recipes suitable for the Indian kitchen. His demonstration video showed the viewers how to make blueberry chutney.
The co-admins of FEA, Dilip Thakkar, Rohit Khanna and Darshan Rawal thanked all those who spoke at or attended the event.
