No two cookies are the same here!
Interesting food choices from a holiday comes back with us in the form of an indelible food memory. Some of us may take it a step further and try to recreate the meal at home. And then there are others like Arushi Sachdeva and Chaman Raj, who do not just attempt to recreate the food, but attempt it about 300 times till they get it perfectly right. And what do they do with the perfect product? Share it with the world! Meet the founders of Dohful, a craft cookie company, and here is the story of their cookie love affair.
Launched in November 2018, Dohful initially started as a passion project for this husband and wife team. “We went to Europe for our honeymoon and we fell in love with the cookies there. Every chance we got, we binged on cookies. Once we got back, we really missed that experience,” said Arushi over a phone conversation.
Instead of burying it as a food memory, the duo turned to their own kitchen to come up with a cookie that would bring Europe to their doorstep. Experimenting for more than 100 days, Arushi and Chaman churned out about 300 batches of cookies in pursuit of their ‘holiday cookie’. “In a day, we used to throw out so many cookies that my mother would be horrified. We gave ourselves a deadline and said beyond that we are not going ahead with this cookie madness,” she added. Needless to say, they did find the right recipe before their deadline. “When we finally made a really good batch, we thought that everyone must taste our labor of love. We tried to pack it up and see if it stayed fresh for a while. That is how we arrived at individually wrapped cookies,” said Arushi.
By the end of their trials, the duo knew that they had to turn this into a full-fledged cookie company, thus starting their venture Dohful.
Not your regular cookie
Most of the Dohful process is done by hand, shared Arushi, who now works with a small team in their facility in New Delhi. The cookies are made in small batches, and the team delivers their products across India. “Our cookies are a little crunchy from the outside and very gooey on the inside. They are more like mini cakes than the biscuits that people are used to” she said.
The flavors one sees on the Dohful shelf have been handpicked by Arushi after extensive product trials. “We have the three classic flavours- the choco brownie, choco chunk and the oatmeal raisin, ” she explained. Additionally, the team also makes a peanut butter marble cookie and a macadamia nuts cookie. ” I had never really tasted a macadamia nut cookie before, but I was very intrigued by this flavor, so I decided to work on it myself. Most people choose chocolate as the first choice, but once they try the macadamia nut, they seem to forget about the chocolate cookies,” said Arushi. And the recent entrant to this menu- peanut butter? “That flavor sort of fell into our lap. I did not expect it to surpass the others, but it is doing really well. People love the chocolate, peanut butter balance in the cookie,” she added.
For The Love Of Food
Graduates from the Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad, both Arushi and Chaman were always drawn to the food sector. They set up their first food venture, Sandwedges, while they were pursuing their management course. Having already cracked the model once, the duo wanted to work on a product that would not be geographically constrained. “Our first food venture is doing well, but one thing we realised was tha, however good the food, people will not travel 50 km just to taste it. This is why we wanted to make a product which would be accessible irrespective of where people are,” said Arushi.
Dohful recently turned a year old, and Arushi shared that she is extremely grateful for the kind of response they have been getting. Having already shipped cookies to more than 960 PIN Codes across the country, the team is now getting requests for subscriptions.” This is the age of Netflix and YouTube, and people get to experience such diverse food visually. Where would you find all these products? I think that is why Dohful has clicked with its audience. We have found a way to match people’s food fantasies,” Arushi added.
Consistent Yet Unique
As Dohful enters its second year, this craft cookie company is working on getting the word around to more people. Despite being the second food venture for this team, Arushi shared that the jitters never really go away. “We are still scared. We still battle questions like is the market ready for this product? Did we get lucky with our initial clientele?,” said the baker. But one thing she knows for sure is that each cookie made by Dohful would have its own unique characteristic. “Very early in my food career someone once said to me, acha nahi chahiye, consistent chahiye (it need not be great, it has to be consistent). So my question was acha kyun nahi chahiye? (why shouldn’t it be great?). Food needs nuance, but what we see is that either the procedure is not standardized, or it looks like the products are machine-made,” she added. So where would one find Dohful in this spectrum? “Our cookies don’t look the same, but they always taste the same. We are trying our best to make products that are each unique.” Just like the world around us, I am left thinking.
To get your own unique cookie, visit Dohful.com. Don’t forget to follow them on Instagram and Facebook to stay updated on all their products.
Dohful also recently launched its YouTube channel where they share recipes every Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday. Get baking!