Increasing Demand For Lunch-Box Delivery Business – Reasons And Challenges

Introduction and background

Evaluate the increasing demand of the lunch-box delivery business.

It has been a common observation that owing to the busy life-style of the people, the working professionals are depending more on the outside food for their lunch and dinner. Considering the hygiene factors and the increase cases of adulterated food, people are no longer found to prefer the food available in the canteen and the cafeteria (MacDonald et al. 2016). These people are found to order home-made food to make sure that the food is healthy and safe. This has given the opportunity for many business entrepreneurs to set up a small or medium-scale business to offer timely lunch and dinner to the customers. The arrangement of the delivery of food to the customers requires the arrangements of two major departments, the pantry where the food is prepared and the other is the distribution system (Bhattacharya 2014). The food can be prepared at the pantry by following a particular time schedule but delivering the food to the customers becomes a real challenge for the management to reach out to the consumers within the stipulated time.

The aim of this study is to find out the various reasons of the increasing demand of the food from the lunch-box delivery service and to understand the management problems that the entrepreneurs faced in order to carry out this business activity. The plan of the research will be discussed in this research proposal stating a detailed research methodology to be used for the completion of the study.

The demand for the lunch-box services has been increasing considerably in the recent time but the major players are facing considerable challenges in meeting the increasing demand of the booking and the instant supply of the food to the customers (Karanth 2017). Managing the increased demand to supply of food at times becomes challenging to deliver the food at the right time. There are several factors like the traffic jam, packing the food and also in meeting the demand of the high quality food demanded by the customers that actually hinders the timely delivery of the food to the customers (Rao and Thejaswini 2014). Thus, management would have to take major decision in order to make sure that the business process goes on effectively.

Reading Sivarak (2017), it has been found that the business of the lunch box delivery services have been gaining importance in the major countries like India or China. The home delivery service was a very well-known service that has been popular in almost every country around the world but the unique idea of service home-made food to the people in order to maintain hygiene and safety in the food products is a newer concept and it requires the management of the entrepreneurs in order to make sure the timely delivery of the products to the consumers (Ghodake 2016). If the reasons for the increasing demand of the tiffin-box services are taken into consideration, it has to be said that people are really busy in their lives and they are no longer taking the option of cooking food for themselves because cooking is a lengthy procedure and it requires one to devote good time. Cooking will require one to make arrangement for the vegetables and other things required to cook the food. In fact, the after procedure of cooking and eating is also time consuming (Thakur 2015). This includes the washing of the dishes and to make the arrangements properly. In order to avoid all these situations, people are found to rather depend on the service of the outside food and availability in order to make sure that they receive good food without much hustle. In fact, it has also been observed from various interviews and studies that people are have also become very cautious about their health and hygiene and so they are looking for the better ways to treat themselves (Ben Letaifa and Reynoso 2015). There is no doubt that the food offered in the cafeterias and other local restaurants are filled with adulterates and that this food is not at all good for health if consumed for a longer time and on a daily basis. In order to overcome this issue, people are now found to depend on the home cooked food that is supplied by the tiffin box services at the various places.

Management problem

The tiffin box service ensures the homely food at in a convenient and pocket friendly price. In fact the facility of delivering the food to the customers has also helped in gaining the popularity because people can be at ease and can enjoy their meals without any kind of additional effort (Ganapathy et al. 2016). All they have to do is to make the payment on a monthly or bi-monthly basis that the amount that they had to spent in one way or the other. The tiffin box delivery service has gained immense popularity and it is not only the office goers and the working individuals who are relying on their services but it has also been found that many household people have also opted for this technique in order to avoid the trouble and the long process of cooking and getting the food (Chakraborty and Hargude 2015).

If the growth of the business is to be taken into account, it has been found that there has been a considerable growth of the business in the cities like Bangalore, India where each tiffin box delivery service has been found to come up with 500 orders in a single day (Karanth 2017). In fact, Mumbai is the main region where this service is most popular and people are greatly depended on the service of the tiffin box delivery, also known as the Dabbawalas. The increasing popularity of this business has been able to attract many researchers and the business activists to focus on the business model that these small and medium business men have been undertaking and making generous profit in their business (Bhattacharya 2014). In fact, this concept has become a topic of debate for many entrepreneur and several attempts have been made in order to understand how this particular business runs because it is one of the most profitable businesses but it equally demands the proper management of the business in order to make sure that everything has been done properly. The cooking and the packaging of the food might be easier and that it can be easier to manage but the delivery service is really challenging and it requires proper management of the entire distribution in order to make sure that the right food has been delivered to the right person (MacDonald et al. 2016).

The discussion is based on the research methodology to be undertaken at the time of carrying out the research. It is expected that if the research is carried on a systematic and timely manner, there would not be any issue in completing the research.

Literature review

Research design:

The descriptive research design will be used for this research and the various models and theories will be used in order to understand the topic in details and to get a descriptive analysis of the research. The research strategies like the exploratory or the explanatory research have not been selected as it would not have given the right picture of the theories and the in depth analysis would not have been carried on (Fuller et al. 2016). For this research, a quantitative approach can be taken for which the tiffin box delivery personnel can be interviewed and they can be asked a few questions regarding their management and the procedure of carrying out their business (Taylor et al. 2015). Apart from this, it is expected that the positivism research philosophy will be used in order to investigate the topic in details and help to understand the actual process of the business. In addition to this, the deductive research approach will be taken and the inductive approach will be neglected as it would not be possible to develop new theories and models for this topic. The study will be dependent on the information gathered from the secondary sources and also from the interviews to be taken from the tiffin box delivery services.

Sources of data to be used:

Both primary and the secondary sources of data will be used for writing the study. It has been observed that there are no such related theories and concepts available on the topic and so the theories of management can be used to understand the business approach taken by the tiffin box delivery services. In addition to this, the news articles and any other information in form of stories or feature writing that are published in the various secondary sources like newspaper, blogs or any such other places will also be taken into consideration for analysing the research study (Lewis 2015). On the other hand, the primary data will also be used for the analysis part. In order to understand the actual management problems and the difficulties that the tiffin box delivery persons face in their day to day activities, it is very important to contact them and know their perspective. For this, it is expected to get a telephonic interview with at least 5 such people. These people will be contacted and then they will be given the details of the research. Later, they will be asked to answer the questions so that a better understanding of the daily routine of their business activities can be gained. For the consent, the consent form can be sent via e-mails and they can return the same by giving their virtual signature in the consent form (Flick 2015). Moreover, they will be rightly informed on the purpose of taking the interview and that the interview will be strictly for the academic purpose.

Research methodology

Conceptualisation and measuring the data:

This particular research will be based on the qualitative approach and so there will be no need of measuring the data by the means of any tool or software. However, the questions will be very to the point in order to get a clear picture of the management problems faced by the management while carrying out the research study (Ledford and Gast 2018). The questions and the sub-questions can be stated as below:

Q1. Why there is an increase in the demand of the tiffin box lunch delivery system?

• The busy life style of the people
• The hygiene factor
• The affordability of the food

Q2. What difficulties are faced for the preparation of the food?

• The arrangement of the entire pantry
• The availability of the staff
• Packing the food

Q3. What major problems arise at the time of delivering the food?

• Unavailability of the delivery persons
• The traffic jam
• Inability to meet the delivery time

In addition to this, after the analysis of the secondary data, such relevant questions will be framed and then the interpretation and the analysis will be carried on.

Data collection method:

As already mentioned, the secondary data shall be collected from the various sources including the internet and any other printed materials like newspapers or magazines. For the primary data, the qualitative approach will be used and the concerned persons will be contacted via phone calls and telephonic interview will be taken.

Data analysis technique: 

Analysis and the interpretation of the data is the main criteria based on which the outcome of the research will be written. For the analysis of the secondary data, a thematic approach will be undertaken (Brinkmann 2014). Based on the research topics, a number of themes will be made and then the outcome will be written from the data collected from the secondary sources. For the analysis of the primary data, based on the research questions and the sub-questions, the response of the respondents will be considered and then the same will be evaluated by the means of thematic analysis (Panneerselvam 2014). However, the themes and the sub themes will also be written in a tabular format in order to give a concise and brief overview of the various themes identified based on which the outcome can be measured.

Ethical consideration:

It is most important to undertake a research in a most ethical manner in order to ensure that nothing inappropriate activity has been conducted while doing the research. For this particular research, ethics will be maintained for collecting both the primary and the secondary data. At the time of collecting the secondary data that would include a detailed literature review on the different theories and models to conduct a critical analysis of the view points of the various authors on the topic (Choy 2014). In order to maintain the authenticity of the collected data and to avoid any kind of plagiarism activity, the data used for writing the study will be referenced properly. For collecting the primary data, it is very important to maintain the proper ethical guidelines, the confidentiality of the respondents have to be maintained. In order to make sure that there is no unethical approach made, the respondents will be supplied with a consent form and their consent to become a part of the research will be recorded (Simonsohn et al. 2017). However, the confidentiality of the participants has to be maintained and that no information related to the respondents will be disclosed to anyone. In such case, it should also be maintained that the entire research will be based only for the academic purpose and so there should not be any approach made towards any kind of promotional or advertisement. The questionnaire will also not contain any symbol or logo of a company that might decipher any kind of promotional activity (Lushey and Munro 2015).

Limitation of the study:

The research might also face some limitation in its completion. For instance, there might not be availability of enough resources in terms of the theories and concepts related to the topic. This will definitely lead to the situation when there will be a limitation to the study as the research would not be completed as per the requirement. The respondents selected for the primary research are also very limited and if the respondents were more, the analysis of the research would have been better (Panneerselvam 2014). In fact, undertaking respondents from different regions and different fields would give a clearer picture of the research study. The budget and the limited time frame for carrying out the research can also be considered as the limitations of the study. If more time and the budget would have not been constrained then more in-depth research would have been carried out to make the research more successful and worthy.

Th timeline

Below is the time line for the research. It is expected that right from collecting the data to the analysis and the interpretation, the research will be completed within a time frame of 12 weeks or 3 months.

Table: The timetable of the research

(Source: Self developed)

Budget of the research:

Table: The Proposed budget of the study

(Source: Self developed)

It is expected that the entire research will be completed with a total amount of $1,070.

Reference list: 

Ben Letaifa, S. and Reynoso, J., 2015. Toward a service ecosystem perspective at the base of the pyramid. Journal of Service Management, 26(5), pp.684-705.

Bhattacharya, S., 2014. Operations Management. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd..

Brinkmann, S., 2014. Interview. In Encyclopedia of critical psychology (pp. 1008-1010). Springer New York.

Chakraborty, A. and Hargude, A.N., 2015, August. Dabbawala: Introducing Technology to the Dabbawalas of Mumbai. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services Adjunct (pp. 660-667). ACM.

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Ghodake, S.T., 2016. Transcending Life through Romance: Mumbai Tiffinwalas and the Lunch Box. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 3(12).

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Lushey, C.J. and Munro, E.R., 2015. Participatory peer research methodology: An effective method for obtaining young people’s perspectives on transitions from care to adulthood?. Qualitative Social Work, 14(4), pp.522-537.

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