The Original Curry Company

It’s our belief that serving food in large volumes should never compromise variety, quality, authenticity and taste. As part of our 5,000-strong supply chain network, Sodexo partners with a host of smaller independent businesses who embrace that same ethos and bring delicious flavours from around the world to our customers’ plates.

We spoke to Mubeen Mitha, director and co-founder of West Midlands-based the Original Curry Company, and asked him to share some of the business’ proud history and how he and his team work hands-on with Sodexo chefs to develop restaurant standard dishes. 

We pride ourselves on using quality ingredients and authentic cooking techniques in every one of our dishes. As a small business, we built our brand around that and we continue to focus on it. My co-founder and our culinary lead Vishal Khanna comes from a family of restaurateurs; his Grandfather was one of the first to open and own a fine dining Indian restaurant in Mumbai and he’s trained and travelled across the world. Eating our food should feel like eating at someone’s home, or in a restaurant.

The Original Curry Company’s three directors James Innes, Mubeen Mitha & Vishal Khanna met as colleagues working in a similar business based in London, and when that ceased trading in 2010 we all still felt there was plenty of mileage in producing high volume, high quality curries for the catering industry. We approached a family run business in Leicester that was thriving in the local area and partnered with them to launch a curry concept in 2011. It was designed to appeal to a wide portfolio of clients, offering a range of fresh chilled curries, side dishes and condiments that were perfect for theme days. It was a quick success story and that’s when we first started supplying Sodexo sites – just like the traditional ‘fish Friday’ our ‘Thali Thursdays’ became a well-loved fixture on menus.

With business growing we moved to our current BRC* certified premises in Dudley in 2018, and we now have a team of 20 and the capacity to produce up to 50,000 meals a week. We offer around 30 different curries at any one time, covering meat, vegetarian and vegan diets and flavours from India, South America, The Middle East, Asian, Africa and the Caribbean. Our curries are enjoyed by travellers in Sodexo-run airport lounges, in healthcare sites, at sporting venues and during school meal times. 

Collaboration with Sodexo teams on menu development is our core strength, and being a small business we can be very hands on. Our chefs are constantly coming up with new dishes to keep cycles fresh; if a team wants to introduce two or three new items to the menu, we will produce 15 to 20 different options to allow them to pick exactly the ones that are right for the customers. We never want to be a business that says ‘this is what we sell; you can order from this list'. Our business is to listen to what our clients need, and produce it. A great example of this is where we’ve recently introduced a range of 11 different curry sauces in response to a request from Sodexo’s defence segment. They’re guaranteed the same taste but there’s ease and convenience for the chefs who can add meat, fish or vegetables as they cook. And although curries are our history and still our core product, we’re expanding into other cuisines and we’re happy to develop full meals or component elements.

Partnering with a large scale business like Sodexo pushes us on not only when it comes to menu development but with our own company goals too. After the Covid pandemic we migrated our offer from fresh chilled to fresh frozen – the cooking process remains exactly the same but it’s more convenient for our clients and there’s a benefit to both parties as it reduces food waste.

We know sustainability and net zero is an area of focus and we’re looking at where we can take our own operations to the next level. As a small business we need to do it slowly and make the investment but we’ve already made changes – targeting our energy usage by replacing old inefficient equipment and switching all the lighting in our factory to LED.

So even though we’re a small business, we don’t take short cuts and we stay focussed on what our customers ask us to do in all aspects of our business. I think that’s a real strength in having three directors who work so closely together. Sodexo knows if they want anything they can talk directly to the people that can make it happen – no bureaucracy, no loop holes.