How this Chhattisgarh cafe mainstreamed millets

Ragi milkshake, bajra khichadi, millet momos and lollipops… Sounds exciting, intriguing and delicious? These recipes were developed at Raigarh Millets Cafe, Chhattisgarh’s first eatery to serve exclusive millet-based foods. 

The cafe was started in 2022 with a will for innovation and a desire for creating a successful model, where nutrition could merge with taste.

It all started with the recognition that millets are indeed nutri-cereals as well as a pathway for women’s empowerment not just economically but also nutritionally, culturally and climatically. 

Popularising millets

From Transform Rural India (TRI), we had been supporting the state and district administrations in Chhattisgarh for creating an awareness and impact around millets. To create a buzz about its nutritional benefits, it was planned to include millets in anganwadis. 

To implement it we identified a self-help group (SHG) to prepare ragi laddoo mix. Before the actual intervention, we planned an exposure visit to Odisha so that the aspiring women could witness the different ways of mainstreaming millets. That’s when the horizons broadened for us. Inspired by the work being done in Odisha, TRI, along with the women and a team of district officials, deliberated on new ways of popularising millets.

So in addition to manufacturing the ragi laddoo mix, the federation of SHGs started a small canteen to serve a few millet-based items. To our surprise, the initiative started gaining popularity and demand.

This led us to come up with more recipes wherein the regular flour was replaced with millet flour. Visitors couldn’t believe that the millet items tasted so good.

Also Read | Uttarakhand’s juiciest millet momos are calling you

A cafe for millet-based foods

The success of the canteen gave us a new idea. Why not start an exclusive cafe to offer millet-based food items? There were a lot of questions in our mind, of course. Will it work? Will people like our fare? Will it be profitable? 

With some initial financial backing from the government we all took a chance and dived right into it. We chose a place in the heart of the city of Raigarh, which has a lot of hustle bustle. It is also next to schools and colleges and we prepared the estimates for the cafe’s establishment and operations.  

We knew that the most important thing that matters when it comes to running a restaurant is the taste and presentation of the dishes. We decided that there was absolutely no compromise on that. So we hired private chefs to prepare a menu with delicacies that were delicious and healthy. And there it was. The Raigarh Millets Cafe.

Also Read | Millets of Mewar restoring glory of forgotten grains

Spreading success

It was a chance that we took and we sure don’t regret it. There were of course some hiccups initially in operations, managing stock and the staff, and so on. But with learnings, expert interventions and training and capacity building sessions, the issues were resolved. 

Based on customers’ feedback, we improved wherever we had to and evolved. Experience and dialogues with other big players opened a lot of doors for us. It helped us move past break-even into a profitable enterprise. 

Our customers include a lot of health conscious youngsters and people with hypertension, anaemia, diabetes and the like. They often refer to the millet-based fast foods as ‘healthy junk’.

Recognition by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Mann Ki Baat programme and the announcement of Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel to replicate this initiative across the major cities of the state has reinforced the SHGs’ resolve and fuelled scaling up of the initiative. So TRI is supporting more district administrations in setting up millet cafes and promoting millets in Chhattisgarh with vigour.

Also Read | A café in Dantewada resuscitates life in a conflict zone

The lead image at the top shows millet dosas, one of the popular items at the cafe. (Photo courtesy TRI)  

Neeraja Nitin Kudrimoti is the associate director, Transform Rural India, in Chhattisgarh.