This Toronto cook will deliver homemade Halal meals to your door every week
Halal food delivery isn't something you come across every day. And what if I told you that it's possible to get takeout without feeling gross afterwards? Where you can order a meal that someone's mom might have made for you, that just leaves you feeling warm and satisfied at the end?
HouseCook aims to provide exactly that kind of service. Inspired by families with busy schedules, no time to cook and fresh, homemade Halal food cravings, the owners want to provide a service that allows people to enjoy delicious meals in the comfort of their homes, stress free.
Maryam Asmat, the founder of HouseCook, noticed a huge gap in Pakistani and Indian meal delivery services when she was a student at Western University in London, Ontario.
She found it difficult to find authentic Pakistani and Indian food that was convenient to buy, often attracting people who would notice the lunches her mother would make for her when she was at school.
"I would often bring [my mom's] meals for lunch and a lot of people would ask me 'oh my god, did you make that?' Because a lot of Pakistani Indian dishes are pretty hard to make, it's a pretty long process," Maryam explained.
"Generally people's parents give them food as a student but if you don't have that luxury as an international student, or you don't go home that often, you just don't have healthy food to eat and you're just eating junk. That's when I realized there is a real gap. It's not just me."
Maryam wrote out a menu of her mother's meals and gave it out to people who would be interested in ordering. Having little knowledge of how to run a business, the three orders they started out with were initially hard to fulfill, but as Maryam's mother Fatima Fayyaz and cousin Bilal Iqbal prove to be highly talented chefs, they kept at it while continuing to work on growing their operation.
Since 2019, HouseCook has grown tremendously, the kitchen run by several members of Maryam’s family and international students who all help out with the cooking under the watchful eye of Fatima and Iqbal.
They've served over 3,000 people since their debut.
"We still have a long way to go. We constantly think about what we have to improve because that's the most important thing for business, but we work with really dedicated people who work super hard. Everybody brings something to the table."
HouseCook's meals are made fresh every Saturday and their menu is completely different each week - you can always expect to try something new.
HouseCook
