Supply Chain Management for Akshaya Patra Foundation

1. *
“No child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger.”

2. State/ Location Year Started Type of Kitchen
Andhra Pradesh
Visakhapatnam Oct-08 Centralised Kitchen
Kakinada Dec-15 Centralised Kitchen
Vijayawada 2015 Centralised Kitchen
Assam
Guwahati Feb-10 Centralised Kitchen (ISO 22000:2005)
Chhattisgarh
Bhilai Jan-09 Centralised Kitchen (ISO 22000:2005)
Gujarat
Ahmedabad Aug-14 Centralised Kitchen (ISO 22000:2005)
Surat Jun-12 Centralised Kitchen (ISO 22000:2005)
Vadodara Nov-09 Centralised Kitchen (ISO 22000:2005)
Karnataka
Bengaluru- HK Hill Jun-00 Centralised Kitchen (ISO 22000:2005)
Bengaluru-Vasanthapura Jul-06 Centralised Kitchen (ISO 22000:2005)
Ballari Jul-04 Centralised Kitchen (ISO 22000:2005, ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001)
Hubballi Dec-04 Centralised Kitchen (ISO 22000:2005, ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001)
Mangaluru Aug-04 Centralised Kitchen
Mysuru Jul-07 Centralised Kitchen
Odisha
Cuttack Jul-14 Centralised Kitchen
Nayagarh Mar-07 Decentralised Kitchen
Puri Jun-06 Centralised Kitchen
Rourkela Nov-13 Centralised Kitchen
Rajasthan
Baran Apr-05 Decentralised Kitchen
Jaipur Feb-04 Centralised Kitchen (ISO 22000:2005)
Jodhpur Aug-13 Centralised Kitchen
Nathdwara Jun-06 Centralised Kitchen (ISO 22000:2005)
Ajmer Centralised Kitchen
Maharashtra
Nagpur Centralised Kitchen
Tamil Nadu
Chennai Jul-11 Centralised Kitchen
Telangana
Hyderabad Oct-08 Centralised Kitchen
Uttar Pradesh
Lucknow Mar-15 Centralised Kitchen (ISO 22000:2005)
Vrindavan Aug-04 Centralised Kitchen (ISO 22000:2005)
List of Kitchens

3. Centralized Kitchen
APF in urban area used a hub-spoke model wherein food is cooked in these
mega kitchens in mass quantities and distributed in small amounts in nearby
schools.
Challenges of Centralized Kitchen
 Limited Reach
• Not cost effective for sparsely populated area or dispersed geography.

4. De-centralized Kitchen
APF came up with concept of de-centralized kitchen in dispersed geography
areas. Also, it helped to serve local food to children
Challenges of De-centralized Kitchen
• Village hygiene standards were different that from urban area.
• Training at de-centralized units
• Corruption & Theft probability increases.

5. Procurement Challenge
Problem - Head Office previously used to procure items like dal, chilli, turmeric and
coriander in bulk at central level to hedge against price increase.
Impact - Forecast seemed to be fallacious as prices came down drastically in 2010
Solution – APF now prefers local purchasing as prices of articles vary in different parts of
country.

6. Operations Challenge
Problem – One of the school inspection report suggested less vegetable consumption
Impact – One of the direct impact was increase in food wastage, also pupils were not receiving
the desired amount of nutrients.
Solution – It was identified that vegetable pieces were big enough for students to chew properly.
So, the vegetable cutting machine was re-calibrated to cut small size of pieces.
Delivery Challenge
Problem – Excess food die to high absenteeism, reports suggested 1-2
schools had this problem daily.
Impact – Cooked food was wasted.
Solution – APF distributed the excess food in slum area, also they
considered to have an additional vehicle which can help them to collect
excess food from main vehicle and distribute in slum area, while the
main vehicle continue to complete its route and ensure timely delivery.

7. Cost – Effective Model
Bengaluru centralized kitchen being one of the initial centralized kitchen was built to concept
of need per basis.
However, the latest facility at Hubli uses innovative idea such as ‘gravity flow’ for moving
cut vegetables to cooking utensils via chutes. This is has considerably reduces manual labour
involved and helped in making the whole system cost-effective.

8. Out-of-the box thinking
Hygiene standards in rural area are very different urban area. Women at SHG did not bathe for 3-4
days. This was totally unacceptable for maintaining a clean and hygenic kitchen.
APF tried many a times convince women to have bathe daily, but all in vain.
Next, they came up with communication that first bite of food prepared daily is to be blessed by
God, and it is to be offered to God. Soon all women took initiative to wash themselves properly
HR related Concerns
Training of SHGs was very labor intensive, as for each women it would take around 10-15
days. To make it more effective, a batch of 50-100 women were called up a centralized
training location for 15 days and thus equal knowledge was transferred.

9. Issues still at large
 A flexible standardization model, with scope of local customizations.
 Worker retention, most of the workers are hired by big-hotels to run
their kitchens once they workers have experience of running a mega
kitchen.
 Corruption and theft remains one of top challenge for Akshaya Patra