The Akshaya Patra kitchens are not just inspiring because of the wonderful work they undertake through cooking the mid-day meal, but also because they serve as an excellent case study for large-scale production and management processes.

It was to study the kitchens from the second perspective that about 20 students from Mount Carmel College in Bangalore visited the Vasanthapura (VK Hill) kitchen on 29th November.

The students came to see the operations process of the kitchen as part of their Food Service Management course to help them understand the nuances of cooking food on a large scale – and the VK Hill kitchen is certainly an excellent model for research.

The highly mechanised kitchen, spread over four floors has adopted a gravity flow model to aid in the cooking process. The storage of raw material, as well as vegetable cleaning and cutting is done on the top floors, while the cooking and loading of food is undertaken on the lower levels. Huge silos filled with dal and rice are constructed on the top floor, from which the required amount of grain/pulses is dropped down chutes for cooking. These technologically advanced processes minimise human contact with the food, thereby ensuring the mid-day meals are not just tasty and nutritious, but hygienic as well.

In the Akshaya Patra kitchens everything runs like clockwork. Everyday fresh vegetables are received from vendors by 11 a.m., and it is cleaned and put into a cold storage room till 2 a.m. At this time, in the early hours of the morning the kitchen staff assembles from their accommodation provided on the campus, to commence cooking for the day. Between 2 a.m. and 9 a.m. food sufficient for almost 100,000 meals is cooked, packed and transported to the delivery vans for loading via a conveyor belt.

The students from Mount Carmel College, none of whom had previously visited an Akshaya Patra kitchen were impressed with the operation, describing the kitchen as ‘well organised’ and ‘hygienic’. Dr. Sangeeta Pandey, Head of the Nutrition and Dietetics Department at Mount Carmel, says, “I come here (to the Vasanthapura kitchen) every year. I have always been very impressed by the cleanliness and safety standards maintained in the cooking for the children. We bring the students here to help them understand how cooking on a large scale is undertaken. Earlier we used to go to the HK Hill kitchen, but we’ve started coming here as the scale of operations is larger at this kitchen.”

This glowing testimonial of the kitchen illustrates how Akshaya Patra’s mid-day meal programme exemplifies great production standards combined with excellent management practices. It is our hope that in the future more students will visit, so Akshaya Patra can continue to help educate and inspire the next generation of India’s entrepreneurs.

Akshaya Patra turns 14 and we’re taking a look back at our journey thus far!

Born of the simple thought to end classroom hunger, the organisation’s vision that ‘no child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger’ has now snowballed into a movement that has touched the lives and hearts of people all over the country and beyond.

With humble beginnings feeding just 1,500 children across 5 schools in the year 2000, today Akshaya Patra feeds over 1.4 million children across 10,661 Government and Government-aided schools across India on every school day. Headquartered in Bangalore the Foundation runs 23 kitchens in 10 states of India, and has a presence in the U.S. and U.K. too.

Akshaya Patra has crossed some huge milestones in the past 14 years. Some of them are:

• 2000 – Launches the feeding programme with just 1,500 children in 5 schools across Bangalore
• 2001 – The Akshaya Patra feeding programme gains momentum with the mid-day meal becoming compulsory in Government schools.
• 2002 – The technologically advanced roti making machine is introduced in the Vrindavan kitchen.
• 2003 – The Government of Karnataka invites Akshaya Patra to partner with it to supply the mid-day meals in the state.
• 2004 – Akshaya Patra expands to Hubli, Jaipur, Mangalore and Mysore too.
• 2005 – Introduces a decentralised kitchen in Baran to reach remote areas of India.
• 2006 – Harvard Business School does a case study on Akshaya Patra’s operations processes.
• 2007 – Opens more kitchens at Nayagarh, Bhilai, Gandhinagar and a second kitchen in Bangalore.
• 2008 – Becomes the first Indian NGO to comply with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).
• 2009 – Serves up 500 million cumulative meals.
• 2010 – Guwahati kitchen is opened establishing a presence in the north east.
• 2011 – Opens a centralised kitchen in Chennai.
• 2012 – Akshaya Patra serves its billionth meal.
• 2013 – Ranked 23rd in The Global Journal list of top 100 NGOs in the world, and opens the Jodhpur kitchen.
• 2014 – Opens kitchens at Cuttack and Rourkela in Odisha.

Aside from these milestones Akshaya Patra has also received huge accolades for excellence in communications, operations process, food safety and financial reporting. The Foundation received the Gold Shield Award from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) for excellence in financial reporting five years in a row, gaining a place in the ICAI hall of fame – the first NGO to ever do so. Akshaya Patra has also received three consecutive LACP (League of American Communications Professionals) Vision Gold Awards, and was awarded the CII National Award for Food Safety by the Confederation of Indian Industry amongst many others.

The past 14 years have seen huge success and growth for the organisation, but there is a long way to go. Looking ahead, the plans are firmly underway to keep the Foundation motoring on course to fulfil its mission of reaching 5 million children by 2020.

But in order to reach that goal we need your help. So join us in our fight to provide food for education to the children of India. Together we can end classroom hunger!