For Seema Makwana from Mumbai, the COVID lockdown was a life-changing period, wherein she finally found her calling. https://52wooster.com The homemaker and mother of two experimented with her cooking and baking skills during the lockdown to eventually carve a successful home-based business. www.biglots.com/survey | Welcome To Big Lots Survey Starting with distributing her homemade snacks in her own housing society in Kandivali to finally launching Buns & Deluchas, a cloud kitchen that serves healthy and homemade fast food, Seema has come a long way in the past two years. https://biographyly.com “I don’t use any kind of preservatives and make everything from scratch. Therefore, the food is healthy and safe to eat for all ages. Though these are fast food items, they are made in Indian flavours to suit our taste palette,” Seema tells The Better India. BJ's MONTHLY SURVEY SWEEPSTAKES — OFFICIAL RULES Launched in December 2021, Buns & Deluchas offers a thoughtfully curated menu of delicious and unique fast food items across Mumbai. They also have takers in countries like Australia, the US, and Canada. connexuscorp.com “We started the business with an initial investment of Rs 5 lakh, and now we have been able to get orders worth Rs 1.5 lakh per month on an average,” says the 41-year-old. Dollar General Customer Satisfaction Survey - Welcome Seema says she never imagined that she could turn around her passion for cooking into a business venture. Dollar General Customer Satisfaction Survey - Welcome “Being a homemaker, it wasn’t easy to start a business and nurture it alongside taking care of household responsibilities. I’d always wanted to start something on my own but it took me a pandemic to figure it out,” Seema smiles. gaylessandwichshopchicago.com Growing up in a middle-class family, she says she had to discontinue her studies after Class 10 due to financial constraints. “After that, I didn’t have much to do, but I eventually became interested in cooking. As I didn’t have enough education, I knew I had little hope to find a good job. But when the idea of starting a food business came up, I was confident as I love cooking. My entire family encouraged me to start the venture,” she elaborates. ArbysWeMakeItRight.com Survey GUIDE To Win $1000 daily “We started off as ‘Seema’s Mystery Buns’ with a small curated menu of stuffed buns, which were received very well,” she says. “This gave me the confidence to expand the business outside my residential society and add more varieties of food in the menu.” Dollar General Customer Satisfaction Survey - Welcome Seema says that all her recipes have been set after observing the fact that there aren’t restaurants or brands that offer healthy yet tasty fast food in Indian flavours. Pizza Ranch Survey - PizzaRanchFeedback Win $250 Gift Card “My husband, who is an architect, has to travel a lot. He would tell me about how difficult it is to find tasty and healthy Indian food while travelling,” she explains. Kroger Customer Satisfaction Survey - Welcome A year later, she expanded her business and launched Buns & Deluchas from her home, delivering food to people across Mumbai. “I added several new recipes that I innovated after several experiments. I include them in the menu only after getting a thumbs up from my husband and children,” she says. Kroger Customer Satisfaction Survey - Welcome The brand specialises in handcrafted artisan buns with a wide variety of stuffings like patties, exotic vegetables, paneer and more, served with homemade dips. They are made eggless and are 100 per cent vegetarian, she says. laurenbeam.org Other than the savoury stuffed buns, Seema also specialises in Deluchas and staffles, which are also the result of her experimentations. She offers sides like potato and banana wedges and desserts like cookies and sweet buns. lucillerobertsexpress.com “Deluchas is the short form for ‘delicious wheat kulcha wrap’, made with fillings of veggies and a choice of patties to make it tastier and healthier at the same time. The staffles are stuffed savoury waffles with Indian and Chinese curries,” explains Seema, who currently runs her kitchen in a small space within her apartment in Kandivali with the help of three staff members. McDonald's Customer Satisfaction Survey on McDVoice.com All their products are priced between Rs 35 and Rs 160. “Cheesy chilli buns, pizzaburg delucha, corn-cheese delucha, aloo tikki buns, etc are some of the most fast-selling products,” she adds. Panda Express Feedback - Welcome Mittal Jhansali, a CA and resident of Kandivali, has been a regular customer of Buns & Deluchas. She says she loves the buns as they are both tasty and healthy. raphaelcycles.com “I started buying from them during the pandemic lockdown almost two years ago and now I am a regular customer. Their products are very unique, especially the staffles, which are interestingly the savoury version of waffles. Their cheese chilly buns and mushroom staffles are my favourites,” she says. screenfury.com Seema’s husband Jenis Makwana has been helping her with branding and marketing. “In the initial days, the brand was promoted mostly through word of mouth. Now we have started promoting it through different social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. We have also launched a website through which people can order directly,” she says. Wendy's Customer Survey - Welcome “We get around 20-25 orders per day through Swiggy and Zomato as well as our website. The number of orders usually increases during weekends. We also deliver outside Mumbai and even to other countries,” she adds. Culver's Guest Satisfaction Survey - Welcome “We do vacuum sealing and freeze the products — upholding all safety and hygienic regulations — at proper temperatures in special food containers. This increases the shelf life up to a month,” says Seema, who plans to open an outlet for her brand in Mumbai. Culver's Guest Satisfaction Survey - Welcome From name brand products like Oreos and Jell-O to cooking basics like butter, skyrocketing inflation has driven up the price of everything — and fast food is no exception. To determine just how much the cost of a fast food meal has increased in the past year, the financial advice site MoneyGeek looked at the price of a burger, french fries, and soda at 145 chain restaurants in America’s 50 largest cities and determined that prices are up 9% from last year overall. Mazzio's Survey - www.Tellmazzios.com - Get Validation Code But they also found that the cost can vary significantly depending on where restaurants are located and further broke their data down into the most and least expensive cities for grabbing fast food. Taco Bell Customer Satisfaction Survey - Welcome According to MoneyGeek’s findings, if you’re looking for cheap eats, perhaps stay outside of California. Four of the highest averages for a burger combo, including the top two, were in The Golden State: San Francisco was most expensive with the average price of the ten meals coming out to $15.30. Los Angeles was the second most expensive city at $14.59. Nearby Long Beach was fourth with a price of $13.08, and heading back north, Sacramento was eighth at $12.67. Taco Bell Customer Satisfaction Survey - Welcome The rest of the ten most expensive cities were New York (#3, $14.22), Washington (#5, $12.94), Philadelphia (#6, $12.89), Boston (#7, $12.69), Seattle (#9, $12.58), and Mesa (#10, $12.46). Taco Bell Customer Satisfaction Survey - Welcome As for the cheapest cities for fast food, MoneyGeek found that a burger, fries, and soda across Tulsa, Oklahoma, averaged out to a mere $6.55. That was significantly cheaper than even the next cheapest city, Wichita, where the average was $7.22. toddwolfson.org The rest of the ten least expensive cities for fast food was El Paso ($7.79), New Orleans ($7.93), Detroit ($8.79), Austin ($8.88), Denver ($9.19), Memphis ($9.28), Indianapolis ($9.30), and Atlanta ($9.36). virtual-rebel.com Nationwide, the median came in at around $11, with Houston holding the 25th spot at $11.13 and Fort Worth landing in the 26th spot at $10.96. The full list can be found on MoneyGeek’s website. Lowe's $500 Sweepstakes At Www.Lowes.Com Survey Importantly, however, not all burger meals are created equal and though similar chains were used across cities, the restaurants selected were apparently not always identical. With that in mind, MoneyGeek’s own data demonstrated how much the prices at certain chains could skew results. For instance, the average price of a meal at McDonald’s came out to just $6.19 whereas the same burger, fries, and soda at Five Guys had an average of $19.95.