Korika – the desire to get a taste of sweet goodness invariably gravitates us towards the so-called sinful desserts – never mind that we call it indulgence. Like a good ending to a great movie – it is the lingering taste of a delicious dessert that lasts longer than the most sumptuous meal.
Niharika Gajula – a marketing professional working in the film industry – when she wanted to enter the business of food – she gravitated towards creating a focused yet tantalising spread of brownies under her brand Korika – which she says represents sinful indulgence – in other words ultimate desire partner!
Evidently there are no two ways about it – “When you order a dessert from Korika, you get that whole experience of eating a proper, rich, sinful dessert and it is something that you celebrate togetherness with people getting around and a bunch of spoons digging into the same bowl,” states Niharika.
Packed into a box which is in this bright red colour with a touch of teal for the playfulness and a drip logo in gold that represents indulgence – the cookies and brownies (four each on the menu) come with a unique blend of a sauce that has inspired the tag line – lick, dip, pour.
Niharika
Here are a few excerpts from a conversation that reveals the story behind the making of the premium dessert brand Korika that is already making its way into the hearts of dessert lovers.
Why Desserts?
My only two interests in life have been movies and food. When you’re growing up in Hyderabad, these are the only two things that you generally also grow up on.
For a very long time now, I have been wanting to get into F&B.
And somewhere along the way desserts was a space that really interested me because at the end of the day, making a dessert is just science. Once your recipe is logged, there is no two ways of doing it, and that fascinated me. Once I decided I wanted to start a cloud kitchen, I knew that I had to make desserts then I would have control over what’s going out.
What has been the journey so far as a food entrepreneur?
When I wanted to begin my food business, I knew basic cooking – the rest I learnt. To begin with I bought a book that says how to open a cloud kitchen. Seriously. There’s no other way to do it; you’ve got to learn the math. I meticulously followed each step that was mentioned. If the first chapter was on documentation – I would sit with my CA and get to the bottom of it.
None from my family was into food business. I had a few friends who were in different businesses. So, I would ask them all kinds of questions. The first chapter was documentation. I sat with my CA and took care of the documentation.
At the same time, I was hunting for a kitchen. I was trying to understand what equipment goes into the kitchen. I was trying to understand how to hire staff, the safety rules and regulations of it, packaging – so, basically, it was like five to six departments that were running parallelly.
Every day, I used to just keep a book and a pen and tick off the work that’s done and plan for the next. That’s how I was able to do it in just two months. Somewhere, I was able to achieve what I wanted to achieve in terms of setting up the kitchen. That’s when I spent a good amount of time standardizing the process. Everything is on paper and by the rule book.
How did you manage to launch Korika in a short time?
It was on August 1st when I started work towards this brand. And then by October 12th, I was ready with setting up a kitchen. By October 22nd, my tasting got done, and that included the trials and standardization, everything was completed by then. We put together some Diwali hampers as a trial and before we knew – we clocked 50 hampers by October 31. Korika has since then been supplying desserts to events, as gift boxes, and by November 4th we launched on Swiggy.
What’s the story behind the menu?
During my travels when I visited European restaurants, I found a liking for their menus that are very crisp. They have no nonsense kind of menus. Yeah. So, somewhere I wanted to create a menu like that. We have exactly four cookies, four brownies and three cakes on our menu. We wanted to give an edge to our menu and I added my secret sauces. The secret sauce is going to represent what we want to give out to our customers. We say – lick, dip, pour. So, you can either just lick the sauce or you can pour the sauce onto the brownies and eat it or you can just dip your cookie into the sauce and eat it.
We’ve got a big community of people that does not eat desserts which contain egg. We have two cookies for them that are eggless – almond cookie and shortbread cookie.
On the brownies we have the plain chocolate variety, our bestseller honeycomb brownie, both of them are eggless. That apart we have our second bestseller coffee brownie and red velvet that contain egg.
Cakes have got the classic – the old-style vanilla cake and Tiramisu that can both be ordered without egg. Then there is the Cheese Cake.
We have white chocolate sauce, chocolate sauce, and hazelnut sauce to go with our cookies and brownies – The Hazelnut sauce has become an overnight success. The other favourite is the Caramel sauce.
What’s the USP of Korika amidst so much choice?
Taste and that we supply fresh batch every time. Even though I know for a fact that brownies last five days even if left outside – I still wanted to deliberately say behind my packaging – Fresh Within 24 Hours.
What we make is what you get. And every day morning, a fresh batch starts. That is why the kitchen starts at 11 o’clock and closes at 11 p.m. because next day morning by four, the next batch gets into the kitchen.
We have zero preservatives and added flavours, except for the red velvet cake which definitely needs food colouring.
Why did you choose cloud kitchen format for your business?
When I decided to work on cloud kitchens there were a lot of people warning me even from my own family.
We were very clear about two things. That we will concentrate on our packaging and taste. If the product is good and if it says you’re selling experience and the packaging is giving you that experience, and the taste is giving you that experience; then there is definitely a consumer base for that. You’ve somewhere got to be extremely truthful to what you’re trying to do.
Secondly, what usually happens with cloud kitchen is that at one point when they see numbers are not matching, then some tend to do a lot of cost cutting. Not every season is going to be a good season.
I knew it’s important to research and understand what I was getting into.
We are not the first people to start anything in food business. There must have been hundreds of mistakes that have happened with many others. I believed I must speak to them, learn from them in order to get a clarity as to what I want to do with my business.
I personally feel that anybody who starts any kind of business, be it cloud, be it anything for that matter, I think it’s always better to sit and strike off, reason out or come up with solutions for problems that you know for a fact are going to occur. I ensured that I got the math right and had clear strategy in place as far as my next step is concerned. I knew even though it’s a cloud kitchen I cannot be casual about it, and must be approached with the same precision that perhaps you would do for a bigger format.
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