History of the Tiffin Box: From Pre-Independence to Modern Day Living

Most widely known and used as lunch boxes for adult workers, their usage is a longstanding tradition in India that has proved adaptable to modern tastes.

India is well-known for their dabbawalla’s and the hard work they do. Any visitor to India will likely see the silver gleam of a tiffin box at some point on their trip. Packed with everything from snacks to full meals, these ubiquitous boxes are a staple in every region of India. Most widely known and used as lunch boxes for adult workers, their usage is a longstanding tradition in India that has proved adaptable to modern tastes.

However, before it was a modern-day necessity, the tiffin box became important even during the British rule. During the early days, overheated Englishmen adjusting to the sweltering subcontinent often passed up a full meal at lunchtime, preferring a swig of “tiff,” a popular diluted liquor. This term stuck around and was used to refer to all meals and snacks taken between breakfast and lunch. The name then came to be applied to the boxes that carried these goods.

Tiffin boxes can vary in size and silhouette, but they are generally stainless steel and oval-shaped, featuring multiple individual compartments stacked together and secured with an outer clip. A handle on the top makes them easily portable for everyone from children to adult office workers.

As the Indian city of Mumbai developed in the late 19th and 20th centuries, a conundrum arose among the workforce. Workers in the bustling city left the house very early and took a long commute to their workplace, leaving too little time for the home cook to prepare a full lunch for them to take with them.

As early as the 1890s, tiffin boxes were used to devise a solution this problem. A man named Mahadeo Havaji Bachche made his own lunch delivery service, employing 100 delivery men to bring lunches packed in tiffin boxes from home kitchens to workers spread out across the city. Bachche’s system quickly gained popularity, as it allowed workers on their lunch breaks to savor popular traditional foods that were generally cheaper than takeout.

The network of these lunch deliverymen, known as tiffin wallahs, rapidly expanded, and in 1968, they were organized into a union called the Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers’ Association. In modern Mumbai, 5,000 tiffin wallahs deliver 200,000 lunches to office workers across the city. The individual compartments of the tiffin box are ideal for the traditional homemade thali lunch featuring bread, spicy curries, pickles, desserts and more. While tiffin boxes still commonly contain this traditional lunch, the booming economy in cities such as Mumbai has resulted in a greater variety of tiffin contents. As workers gain more disposable income and become more health conscious, there has been an increase in tiffin boxes featuring expensive yet more healthful Western meals, such as egg white omelets.

Though the tastes of India’s city dwellers may vary, the utility of tiffin boxes has remained strong. Thanks to the elaborately developed supply chain in cities such as Mumbai, these easily portable boxes will be feeding harried, hungry office workers for the foreseeable future. Additionally, their easily cleaned aluminum material and stackable design are a favorite among picnicking families and school children, ensuring that tiffin boxes are an Indian tradition that is here to stay.