Culinary Tradition of Bengal—Newer Avenue for Business
摘要
Cuisine, its experiment, preparation, and consuming, has long been counted a kind of cultural heritage. Culinary heritage is a dynamic, living product, which creates social relationships as it at the same time marks off and maintains cultural difference. Cuisine—a major part of “material culture” of any region is dependent on its historical and geographical background, culture, beliefs, rituals, social structure, and occupations and so on. In Bengal also, food occupies a major part in its culture. The use of food ingredients and food preparation methods has been passed on from one generation to the next. Traditional foods and beverages may be produced as homemade, by restaurants and small manufacturers, and by large food processing plant facilities. Some traditional foods have geographical indications and traditional specialties. Starting from food blogs and cloud kitchens, a number of business ventures has been initiated that seeks to maintain this tradition on a different note. They are creating demands for such traditional cuisine through improvisation, vigorous advertising and are using the same for generating profit. As restaurant goers’ craving for traditional cuisine is growing rapidly and consistently, prospects for commercial marketing of foods are expanding significantly. This sector, in fact, is now one of the most rapidly growing sectors in India. This paper intervenes here and explores how entrepreneurs and established business chains bank on this culinary tradition and improves upon it to expand its commercial viability. We also examine the impact of social media in boosting the sales for small-scale food vendors, using some recent case studies from all over India.