We live with what we accept

We ordered two trays of eggs from a delivery platform this morning. Two were broken. Five cockroaches survived the trip and arrived with the eggs.

This wasn’t a one-off incident. We have had similar deliveries seven times over the last eighteen months. Broken eggs, insects, poor handling. Each time we raise a complaint. Each time we get a refund. We have told them, more than once, that we do not want refunds. We want them to fix the problem. Nothing has changed.

Refunds are not a quality process. They are a way of making the complaint go away.

Taking over a kitchen

We took over a new kitchen a few weeks ago for our catering operation. A corporate office canteen serving 200-plus people, three meals a day plus snacks. The previous vendor had been running the space for twelve years.

We got the keys at midnight. The previous vendor served their last meal at 11PM. We had to serve coffee at 5AM.

When we walked in, the place was infested. Cockroaches across the surfaces. Rats in the walls. The plumbing was broken. The electrical work needed redoing. Doors did not close. Drains were partially blocked and filled with grease.

The previous operation had been serving food from this kitchen for twelve years. Three meals a day for 200-plus people. Out of this.

When we raised these issues with the building management and the outgoing vendor, the response was the same from both: you do not know this place. It will always be like this.

What we did

We spent the first few days ripping things out. Redid the plumbing. Rewired sections of the electrical. Fixed every door so it could close and seal. Cleaned the drains. Scrubbed and sanitised every surface, every shelf, every corner. Work is still ongoing. We are doing a deep pest control next week, while moving food production out. All on our own money.

The 5AM coffee deadline did not move. We made it work, but the gap between inheriting a broken kitchen and running a clean one is not a switch you flip. It is weeks of work compressed into hours, and then continued over months.

Rats and drainage

If a food operation sits near a public drainage line, even a covered one, which is usually the norm for most restaurants on the main roads, rats are a constant problem. This is not specific to one location. We deal with it at three of our sites.

The way to manage it is gates, meshes, and traps at every possible entry point before they can reach the kitchen. There is no single fix. It is layer after layer of physical barriers, checked and maintained on a regular basis. If you miss one gap, you are back to where you started.

The real problem

The previous vendor operated for twelve years. The management knew the state of the kitchen. The food was going out. The complaints, if there were any, were handled the same way our delivery platform handles ours: here is a refund, now go away.

We live with what we accept.

The delivery platform refunds broken eggs and cockroaches instead of fixing its supply chain, because that is easier. The building management watched a kitchen fall apart over twelve years and did nothing, because the food still went out. The vendor kept serving from it, because nobody stopped them. We are not exempt from this. If we let our own standards slip over time, we become the next version of the same problem.

The vendor and the management both tried things over the years. We have been at it for a few weeks now. We do not know if our approach will hold. Rats and cockroaches do not care about good intentions.

What comes next

We are going to keep at it. Fix what is broken, maintain what we have fixed, and see where things stand in a year. We will write an update then.

The goal is not to prove anything. It is to see whether a kitchen near a public drain, in Chennai, in a building that has had pest problems for over a decade, can be kept clean with the right systems and enough persistence. We do not know the answer yet but are hopeful at making things better because we live with what we accept.