This short video by The Perennial Plate taught us... | Archie McPhee's Endless Geyser of AWESOME!

This short video by The Perennial Plate taught us about an amazing group of people in Mumbai, India who proudly undertake a truly awesome feat every day. They are the Dabbawalas and, in essence, their job is simple: they collect freshly cooked lunches and deliver them to hungry office workers. But it is the extraordinary scale of the operation that makes our jaws drop:

“Each day in Mumbai 4000 men in white outfits and matching hats transport 175,000 lunches across the big city. They retrieve the tiffens (lunch containers) of food from mothers and wives, and bring them (by foot, train, bicycle and even carried on top of their heads) to the office buildings of waiting husbands and sons. The Dabba Wallas have been doing this since the late 1800s. Despite the unsophisticated mode of transport, the lunches always arrive on time (the error rate is 1 in every 16 million transactions). It’s a pretty impressive feat and we were lucky enough to follow a couple Dabba Wallas for a day in Mumbai, and see their work first hand.”

175,000 lovingly home-cooked lunches successfully delivered from homes to offices every day. That’s pretty freaking awesome. (And probably really tasty too.)

[via Serious Eats]