Taste of home: TiffinStash in The Canadian Press

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Taste of home: TiffinStash in The Canadian Press

Taste of home: Tiffin lunch boxes bring comfort, affordability to immigrants

Ritika Dubey reports for The Canadian Press on tiffin cultureโ€™s impact on immigrants across Canada

Statistics Canada reported the jobless rate rose to 6.6 per cent in August as the labour market continued to weaken, with students and recent immigrants shouldering the brunt of the softness.

Taste of home: Tiffin lunch boxes bring comfort, affordability to immigrants
Yugali Bharote prepares small Indian snacks and meals for family and friends in her home kitchen in Burlington, Ont., on Friday, October 4, 2024. (Peter Power / The Canadian Press)

"These days, there are more sellers than customers," said Shruti Shah, co-founder of tiffin marketplace TiffinStash. The platform connects vendors and customers across the Greater Toronto Area and has about 40 tiffin services listed on the network.

"Because sellers have grown, so has the competition."

And some competition is also now coming from restaurants, Shah said.

"Restaurants have realized ... all they have to do is to prepare standard meals and they can have this as an additional revenue channel," she said.

"While there are a lot of new (entrants) in the market, at the same time, there's a lot of sellers who are also moving out of the business because of competition and quality that they're not able to maintain," she said.

Shah said tiffin customers can range from busy working parents to international students to seniors looking for affordable takeout food options.

Most vendors entering the market sell home-cooked meals for cash or without registering their businesses to keep costs low, Shah said. Shifting operations to a commercial kitchen could prove to be a financial burden for a small-scale business.


๐Ÿ“– Want to read more? Check out the full Canadian Press article here.

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