Vishal S S (cbedit@imaws.org)
A 13-years-old boy entered as a helper in his brother’s ‘New Star’ bakery at Royapettah, Chennai with a passion for bakery art knew nothing but had a dream of becoming a pastry chef in some bakery. Fast forward 2021: Lesser was known at that time, he would be heading the pastry operations of one of the leading bakeries in Kerala. Parameshwaran and his brigade ensure that every customer is taken care of with love, affection, and care.
A view of Komala bakery in Kerala
Parameshwaran was a pastry chef ‘by birth’. He used to spend a lot of time with his brother during his school vacations. He used to start his work in the early morning and the work will go till midnight sometimes beyond that. After finishing his schooling he finished a diploma course in cake designing and decorating and worked for many bakeries, companies, and restaurants in Chennai, Dubai, and Kolkata. He also worked for Spencer’s in Chennai for a long time.
Parameshwaran is mainly focused on confectionery sections like homemade chocolates, brownies, candies, pudding, desserts. So many people hesitate to take up this area as their main focus of masterpiece, he is also a renowned all-rounder in all the categories including pastry and bakery items.
Fourteen Years In Komala Bakery
Parameshwaram has been traveling with Komala Bakery now for almost fourteen years. It has around five branches in Thrissur, Kerala. Implications of large machinery like those of corporates are not possible because it needs a lot of capital and area. Parameshwaran introduced french pastries, napoleon pastry, and other new items to Komala bakery. He trained his juniors and co-workers at the unit to enjoy each moment of making delicious products of Komala Bakery. His team at Komala Bakery from all the units consists of around sixty peoples The different types of puffs, bread, variety cookies, cakes which has impacted a major growth in the demand for Komala bakery.
Parameshwaran was practicing as a bakery technical consultant in Kerala after returning from Dubai. He introduced a lot of imported machinery to a large number of bakeries in Kerala. He approached Komala bakery at the very beginning to give a demo for a rotary machine as a lot of workers at that time were unaware of the machine technology. This demo session was done by making a lot of new products. Fresh cream was first introduced by Parameshwaran at Komala Bakery. That’s the time when he would have not imagined, he was about to get a job offer from Komala Bakery. ‘The one single question that was asked to me was “when are you going to join?”. Said Chef Parameshwaran. .
Covid – 19 Pandemic
“During the time of the Pandemic, there has been a fluctuation in the business, the demand changes every day. As an executive chef at Komala Bakery, we had changed the menu every frequent time based on the demand. At present we are working at Kunnamkulam (Town at Thrissur) which is a small town, therefore we can’t make any costly foods as there won’t be a chance of sales happening and people won’t accept that very easily.” he Parameshwaran said. During the pandemic, a lot of customers went online and started adapting to delivery options which was declining the sales. Apart from other bakeries, we make in a unique way, style and taste. This can be only experienced by directly coming to the shop.
“We work on the area where we can develop our weak points. we need to concentrate on a hundred different products, then only we will get a thousand customers” added Chef Parameshwaran.
Challenge in Technical Adaptation
Kunnamkulam is a municipal town where there are only specific communities of people. The demand for bakery items in this region at present has fallen down to twenty percent because of the post pandemic situation. Spiral mixing machine, Grinding machines, Planetary mixer, Deck oven and Rotary oven are the main machines that are used at Komala Bakery for their making. The biggest challenge of this technical adaptation was to maintain hygiene and in fact the team was not ready to compromise on the quality of their products. Komala Bakery’s main motive of adopting the machines was to reduce the manpower, maintain the quality, increase the hygiene and give production in bulk quantities. This has actually impacted their sales during that time.
“Adapting to machines was a very huge challenge ten years back as the staff were not aware of the technology and large scale machines cannot be adapted immediately if there is no demand for the products”. concluded Parameshwaran.
Komala Bakery is planning to develop a wholesale production unit, which is under construction at Mundur (Palakkad District), for this they are introducing large scale machines which will increase the production in bulk quantity. Excess machines which are available here at Komala Bakery, will be shifted to the new production unit after completion.
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