Having a party ? Or are flooded with unexpected guests. No reason to panic. Enter Ethnic Gourmet foods, the fastest growing company that offers Gourmet restaurant style cuisine – all in a packaged box. These frozen dinners are not only delicious and authentic but conform to stringent standards of the Natural food industry. That means the food is prepared by avoiding any chemicals, refined sugars, artificial flavors, etc. This was more than a decade ago. Now the product lines of Taj Gourmet Foods and The Thai Chef offer Indian and Thai Frozen dinners & appetizers, cooking & marinade sauces, Papadums and chutneys. The latest in this line is Bravissimo Pizza.

So who are the people behind this success story. Meet Sangeeta and Paul Jaggi, an enterprising couple who innovated this product line from the throes of an Indian Restaurant, Oh Calcutta, located in Framingham downtown. Owners Paul and Sangeeta initially tried to sell their restaurant food in containers to nearby establishments. Bread and Circus, a gourmet grocery store gave them the first break and introduced the innovative line of perishable products in its Chef area. And so Taj Gourmet Foods was born.

Sangeeta says that Bread and Circus still carry their products. “We got our first break from them and we are happy they still carry them in their store. The reason behind this is that the foods that are packaged are natural and preservative free and that was what the grocery store was looking for at the time". Soon the couple established connections with other buyers and brokers and the business grew. United Natural foods picked up the distribution to other Natural chains. Ethnic Gourmet was started in 1995 when the company expanded their products to Thai and other cuisine’s. Last year, Heinz Foods bought the company which Sangeeta admits is a relief since the responsibility of running was passed on and they could focus on the products themselves. Husband Paul Jaggi is the General Manager and runs the daily operations along with other family members.

Sangeeta rattles off the list of products right out of her head - 8 ethnic rice bowls, 8 snack items, wraps, 14 to 15 Indian entrees, samosas, 8 Thai entrees, 9 varieties of pizza and 13 Linda Mc Cartney foods. These are the array of items that the company Ethnic Gourmet sells to its dealers and consumers.

So what happened to O Calcutta. It was bought over by a partner and the restaurant was moved to another corner of the town and renamed Rasoi. Now the Ethnic Gourmet operations are run from one single place but a cold storage facility is in Worcester since the volume of business has grown. When Heinz came in, the Linda McCartney line of foods was introduced. The food is distributed nationwide and Sangeeeta is optimistic that the popularity of Indian food will increase and therefore also competition. “This means continuous innovative methods of marketing and packaging.” She says, ”Our sales charts tell us what is popular and we keep it as an indicator. For instance the relishes that we introduced did not do so well so we dropped them but the chutneys are doing very well.” Now Ethnic Gourmet is targeting the supermarkets like Stop and Shop and other Specialty stores .” We introduced our restaurants bestsellers as our first products and they are doing very well too", she says. These are carried by over 4000 natural food stores and select supermarkets all over the country and Canada.

The company has close to 80 employees and Sangeeta now feels she can steal away to spend more time with her two children son Angad, 11 and daughter Simran 4/1/2 . It is obvious she enjoys the transformation from the world of business to the more homely role of playing a soccer mom to the hilt. Lady luck and fortune have been kind to her and she attributes the success of the company to her husband’s determination and on being at the right place at the right time. To Sangeeta Jaggi, sky is the limit and as an entrepreneur she comes out as smart and ambitious with a mind that knows what she wants.

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