dipchand bihari
post news network
Bhubaneswar, August 31: If you are a foodie whose taste buds constantly crave fresh tastes, here is some good news for you: ‘Big Bites’, a food stall near RD Women’s University, serves a special dish they have “created”, named the ‘chicken gupchup’.
The filling is essentially what separates this gupchup from its peers; instead of potato and peanuts with masala, this dish has chicken with masala and is served with a Big Bites special chutney.
Narayan Sahoo, the owner of the stall, said the dish has been a big hit among his customers right from the first day it started selling a year ago. “I wanted to give the gupchup a new taste and look. I considered several suggestions before I decided to use chicken for filling. When we first tasted the dish ourselves we liked it and that gave us the confidence to put it up on our menu. Our customers have received the dish well,” Narayan said.
Narayan served up this gupchup for free in the initial days. People started liking it and within 10 days the dish had gathered adequate patronage to start selling.
The dish — a seven-piece plate — now sells for Rs30. The idea of introducing the dish had struck Narayan a year ago. “When I planned to start this eatery, I had one thing in mind: Unless I had something new to offer, some new taste, nobody will care for my stall amid the competition all around. Chicken gupchup was my answer. Ours must be the only stall in India that sells this food item,” Narayan claims.
He says that his stall caters to about 100-200 customers and he does business for `1,000 to 1,500 a day.
Narayan is candid about the recipe. “We use cabbage, beans, masala and chicken to prepare the filling. Our special chutney is what makes this gupchup really special,” he says.
The other variants of gupchup that Big Bites sells are mushroom gupchup and mutton gupchup. These too sell as seven-piece plates and are similarly priced. This apart, the eatery offers goreng noodles (a southeast Asian dish), and Mughlai chow mein, which are also among the quick selling fast foods at the stall.
Narayan, who is 29, is an MBA from Techno School, Bhubaneswar. He had completed the course in 2010 and started working at a finance company. After three years there, he took up work as an interior designer for a year. He also prepared for banking exams during that period.
Finally, though, Narayan quit these jobs to enter into the food business. “It was encouraging that people liked my experiment. I want to experiment newer tastes with the gupchup. I plan to introduce 100 varieties of gupchup for customers soon,” he says.
At present Big Bites employs seven people, each trained personally by Narayan. The entrepreneur is now planning to open another outlet near KIIT square after Ganesh Puja.
That should be a venture to keep a weather eye on.
