How to Start a Tiffin Service in India and Recover Your Investment in 90 Days

Enjoy cooking? Looking for ideas on how to start a tiffin service from home? While food delivery apps are full of restaurants, many still crave the comfort of a simple thali that tastes like home. That’s where a tiffin service can be both a smart business idea and a way to meet a community need.

If you’ve ever wondered how to start a tiffin service from your kitchen, the good news is that it’s a low investment business idea and can bring in steady income. With the right plan, you can recover your money in just 90 days. This guide will show you step by step how to start a tiffin service, calculate costs, attract customers, and break even within three months.

Why a Tiffin Service? (Market Potential)

India’s urban food delivery market is booming, and a growing part of it comes from tiffin services. Students living away from home, office workers with long hours, and families looking for healthier options are all steady customers.

Unlike restaurants, a tiffin business offers:

• Home-style trust factor: People often prefer homemade food over oily restaurant food.
• Affordable pricing: Tiffins usually cost less than daily ordering from apps.
• Repeat customers: Since meals are needed daily, the business creates recurring income.

This makes the tiffin business one of the best home-based food business ideas in India today.

How to Start a Tiffin Service: Initial Setup and Investment

Starting a tiffin service doesn’t require a fancy kitchen or high costs. Most people begin in their home kitchen. However, you’ll need a few essentials:

• Kitchen utensils & stove upgrade: ₹8,000
• Raw material & groceries: ₹5,000
• Packaging (containers, boxes, foils): ₹3,000
• Marketing (flyers, WhatsApp ads, posters): ₹2,000
• Contingency/emergency fund: ₹2,000

That makes the initial investment around ₹20,000. Depending on your scale, it can range between ₹10,000 and ₹50,000. For anyone learning how to start a tiffin service, keeping costs low in the beginning is the golden rule.

Steps on How to Start A Tiffin Service from Home

1. Decide Your Target Customers

Are you focusing on college students, office workers, or PG residents? Knowing your audience helps you decide on the menu, pricing, and delivery. If you’ve been thinking how to start a food business from home, just look around.

2. Set Your Menu and Pricing

Keep it simple: dal, sabzi, roti, rice, maybe a salad. Offer both veg and non-veg options. Most tiffin services in India charge between ₹70 and ₹120 per meal. Setting a tiffin business profit margin is essential before you start your own tiffin business.

3. Plan Operations

Decide who will cook, when you will start preparing meals, and how delivery will be handled. Even if you start small, operations need to run on time every day. Before starting, prepare a tiffin service marketing strategy.

4. Legal and Hygiene Basics

Register your tiffin business with FSSAI for food safety. Maintain a clean kitchen, use fresh groceries, and ensure packaging is hygienic.

5. Marketing and Promotion

This is the most important step in how to start a tiffin service in India. Begin with:

• WhatsApp groups in your area.
• Posters in offices, PG hostels, and residential colonies.
• Word-of-mouth promotion through satisfied customers.
• Listing your service on platforms like Zomato, Swiggy, or Dunzo once you scale.

How to Break Even in 90 Days (Numbers Game)

Let’s look at an example of how quickly a tiffin service can become profitable.

• Initial investment: ₹20,000
• Price per tiffin: ₹80
• Cost per tiffin: ₹50 (raw material, packaging, utilities)
• Profit per tiffin: ₹30

If you sell 25 tiffins per day, you make ₹750 profit daily. Over 90 days, that’s ₹67,500. This not only recovers your ₹20,000 investment but also leaves you with extra income.

This is why many small entrepreneurs say tiffin service business plans are among the fastest to break even in India.

Smart Tips to Reach Faster Break-Even for your Tiffin Business

If you want to reach your profit goals faster, here are some tricks:

• Start with pre-orders or subscriptions so you know exactly how many meals to cook daily.
• Offer trial packs for new customers to build trust.
• Partner with offices, PGs, or housing societies for bulk orders.
• Reduce wastage by planning portions smartly.
• Keep your delivery radius small to save on costs.

These small changes can help you scale up from 10 meals a day to 50 or even 100 meals a day within months.

Challenges and How to Handle Them

Like every business, tiffin services come with their share of challenges:

• Food consistency – customers want the same taste and quality every day.
• Delivery issues – managing on-time delivery can be tough without proper planning.
• Customer expectations – some may ask for menu changes, larger portions, or last-minute orders.
• Competition – restaurants and cloud kitchens also serve home-style meals.

Customers usually stick with services that are reliable and honest. If you want to run a profitable tiffin service in India, the solution is to stay consistent, communicate clearly, and focus on building trust.

Success Story

Take the case of Risika, a homemaker in Hyderabad, who began her tiffin service with just 10 meals a day. Within three months, word of mouth and a few WhatsApp promotions helped her reach 60 meals a day. She recovered her ₹25,000 investment in less than 90 days and now earns over ₹70,000 monthly. Read her success story to know how she did it. 

Stories like this show why tiffin service in India continues to be one of the most profitable home businesses for women.

FAQs on How to Start a Tiffin Service from Home:

Q1. How much investment is needed to start a tiffin service in India?

You can begin with as little as ₹10,000 if you already have a kitchen setup. On average, ₹20,000-₹30,000 is enough to cover groceries, packaging, and marketing.

Q2. Is tiffin service a profitable business?

Yes, with margins of ₹25-₹40 per tiffin, and recurring daily demand, it is one of the most reliable tiffin business ideas.

Q3. Do I need a license to start?

Yes, FSSAI registration is recommended for any food business in India, even home-based ones.

Q4. How many meals per day do I need to sell to break even?

With an average margin of ₹30 per meal, selling 20–25 meals daily can help you break even within 3 months.

Q5. How to get customers for a tiffin service?

Start with WhatsApp groups, PG hostels, and nearby offices. Word of mouth spreads fast if your food is tasty and consistent.

Starting a tiffin service is one of the simplest ways to turn your cooking skills into income. With low investment, steady demand, and repeat customers, it is a low investment business idea that genuinely works. If you plan well and stay consistent, you can recover your money in just 90 days and start earning profits soon after.

Thinking of starting your own tiffin business? Begin with a clear plan today, and you could be running a profitable service in just three months.

Happy cooking!

Need capital to get started? Apply For a Business Loan here. 

If you are a woman entrepreneur who wants to take your business to new heights and is in need of working capital and entrepreneurship resources, come speak to us on Mahila Money. For more such #JiyoApneDumPe live conversations, download the Mahila Money App on Play Store or visit us on www.mahila.money