Cook vs Tiffin vs Subscription: The Actual Maths
These three get compared constantly and almost always badly, because people compare a cook's salary to a subscription's price as though those were the same kind of number. They are not — one of them has four other costs attached.
Here is the version that counts everything.
The three, with everything included
A cook — salary, plus groceries you still buy, plus a festival bonus of about a month's salary a year, plus the days nobody comes.
A tiffin — one flat monthly figure. Genuinely one number, which is part of the appeal.
A subscription — a prepaid figure, minus refunds for days you skip.
For one person, one meal a day
| Monthly, all in | |
|---|---|
| Part-time cook | ₹6,000–7,500 |
| Neighbourhood tiffin | ₹2,500–4,000 |
| Subscription | ₹2,700–4,160 |
| Cooking it yourself | ₹3,000–5,000 + ~30 hours |
The cook figure is the lunch share of a two-meal arrangement — half the salary, plus the lunch share of groceries, plus the skip-day orders. It is the most expensive row and it is not close, because you are paying for a person's time to produce one meal.
Honest ranking for one person: tiffin cheapest, subscription next, cook last. If the tiffin near you is good, take it — we would rather say that than pretend otherwise.
For a family of four, all meals
| Monthly, all in | |
|---|---|
| Full-day cook | ₹12,000–26,000 |
| Four tiffins | ₹10,000–16,000 |
| Four subscriptions, one meal each | ₹10,800–16,600 + other meals |
| Cooking yourselves | ₹8,000–12,000 + a lot of hours |
Now the cook is competitive, and at the top of the range she is doing considerably more — all meals, kitchen work, flexibility, cooking to your taste. This is the household where a cook is genuinely the right answer, and where the per-person maths finally works.
The number that flips the comparison is household size, not price. Below three people a cook is an expensive way to eat; at four it is usually the cheapest good option. Almost every argument about this is really two people comparing different household sizes without saying so.
The costs people leave out
For a cook: groceries, the festival bonus, the agency fee, and the skip days. Together these are roughly a third to a half again on top of the salary.
For a tiffin: no refund when you skip, and no backup when the cook is ill. If you travel a week a month, you are paying for meals you did not eat.
For a subscription: the money goes out up front. Check what happens on skipped days before you buy — ours refunds them in full, and not all do.
For cooking: about an hour a day, which most comparisons value at zero.
What actually decides it
- How many people eat at home — this decides more than anything else.
- How predictable your week is. Frequent travel favours anything with refunds and disfavours a salary.
- How many meals. A cook is only good value across two or three; for one meal she never is.
- Whether you enjoy cooking. If yes, none of this applies and you should keep doing it.
Our bias, stated
We sell a lunch subscription. On the table above we are the middle option for one person and not the winner — a tiffin is cheaper, and for a family a cook is better. Where we think we are genuinely the right answer is narrow: one person or a couple, one meal, an unpredictable week, and a preference for knowing what is coming.
If you want the wider comparison including our competitors, we have written that up too, and it says where each of them beats us.
Fresh, chef-cooked lunches delivered daily across Hyderabad — from ₹90 a meal, no delivery fees.
See where we do and don't fitShort version
One person, one meal: tiffin. Family of four, all meals: cook. Unpredictable schedule and one meal: subscription. And count the groceries, the bonus and the skip days before you compare a salary to a price.
