Serving Smiles: FROM HEART TO TABLE

NIROOP PRABHAKAR owns and runs the restaurant 615chutney in Nashville, Tennessee. 615chutney started as the only Indian food truck serving vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free South Indian food. Niroop's goal was to bring South Indian cuisine to the US. He believes that customer service is the key. The voices of his customers and employees matter to him. Here he is interviewed by the Heartfulness Wellness team.

- NIROOP PRABHAKAR

Q: Can you please share your journey from India to the US and how you started 615chutney?

My dad used to say, you can live without anything else but you cannot live without food. That inspired me to get into this noble art of serving food and making good food accessible to everybody. The journey of my food business started with meeting family, eating food like a feast, and sharing love and affection with all mycousins, uncles and aunts.

At the end of the day, I wanted to make sure that food was being served with love and the hope that tomorrow is going to be a better day. I was born and raised in Tamil Nadu, then moved to the US in 2008, and ended up in Tennessee. Both states have the initials TN. Well, 615chutney was born.

The main goal is to give authentic South Indian food to the southern part of the country, and give it in a special way with good customer service. I empathize with my customers and make sure that my employees are happy when they’re serving the food.

Q: The way you connect with your customers through your service is fascinating. What is the reason for reducing the number of seats in your restaurant?

Initially, the business started as a food truck and I was serving vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free food which is nothing but the basics of South Indian cuisine— idli, dosa, vada, and pongal.

With gluten-free being the future of food, I was able to align my products with whatever the customers wanted. In 2019, we started a brick-and-mortar setup. In a couple of years, the area was hit by a tornado, then Covid-19.

Covid helped us think out of the box. I moved to a different location and reduced the number of seats, making sure I accommodated as many guests as possible but at the same time allowing time to talk to everybody individually.