Onam Sadya by the Countryside, Luncheon at Home, are part of Kerala's Responsible Tourism Mission, which will involve 2,000 all-women units to serve ethnic cuisine

The ethnic cuisine of God’s Own Country is to be used for increasing footfall and promotion and branding of the destination by the Responsible Tourism (RT) Mission.

Holidayers reaching the State can savour the time-honoured dishes with the RT Mission setting up a network of 2,000 ethnic cuisine units to provide homely food cooked in hygienic condition to the guests.

Besides promoting the culinary identity of the State, the ‘Experience Ethnic Cuisine’ project aims at empowering women here as the units will be run solely by women’s groups.

The initiative comes in the wake of the good response to the RT Mission’s ‘Nattinpurangalil Onam Unnam’ (Let’s have an Onam Feast in the Countryside) during the harvest festival and ‘Veettil Oonu’ (Lunch at Home) units that have sprung up in the State focussing on traditional Kerala cuisine.

The RT Mission will kick off the formation of the all-women units in the State in July to ensure that they go on stream during the forthcoming Onam and tourist season. The women will be trained by resource persons and Food Safety Department officials in all aspects.

The RT Mission will also help these units to obtain Food Safety licences.

Job creation

The Working Group on Tourism has cleared the proposal and sanctioned ₹25.96 lakh for the initiative. In addition, a sum of ₹20 lakh will be used for training from the ₹60 lakh allocated for training and capacity-building initiatives.

The network of 2,000 trained and registered hygienic ethnic food units across the State will support the 40 experiential tour packages developed by the RT Mission. “This will create direct employment for 8,000 women and 12,000 will get indirect employments in the tourism sector. Besides it will help remote places enter the tourism map and help increase footfall,” an RT official said.

A 10-page microsite in the official website in 21 languages, promotional video, social media campaign, and online booking platform have also been planned.

The initiative is a big step from Kerala Tourism to promote the State as a food-lover's paradise.