A tiffin service is a food business that delivers home-style meals to the same customers on a repeating schedule, usually lunch or dinner on working days, and is paid as a weekly or monthly subscription rather than order by order. The customers are students, working professionals, hostel residents and people recovering at home; the menu rotates daily; and the meal travels in a steel tiffin or a sealed box along a fixed route.
Why it matters
Subscriptions give predictable revenue and almost no marketing cost per meal once a customer is signed up, which is why the model is the most common home food business in India. The economics per meal are thin, though, so the business lives on retention, route density, clean handling of skip days and pauses, and collecting payment on time. Losing ten subscribers hurts more than losing a hundred one-time orders. How to start a tiffin service in India covers licences, menus and routes.
Example
A service has 80 subscribers at ₹3,200 a month for 26 lunches, about ₹123 per meal, so ₹2.56 lakh in monthly revenue. Per meal, food costs ₹55, packaging ₹8 and delivery ₹15 on a dense route, so ₹78. That leaves ₹45 per meal, or about ₹93,600 a month across 2,080 meals, before rent and salaries. Losing ten subscribers removes ₹32,000 of revenue and almost ₹12,000 of contribution, which is why a good tiffin service tracks who skipped this week. Tiffin service pricing works through monthly and per-meal rates.
Tiffin services on Tezzu take orders on WhatsApp with rotating menus by weekday, scheduled orders and cash on delivery or UPI; see Tezzu for tiffin services.