Meet India’s Very First Dog Chef Who Also Wants To Open A Restaurant For Them

We all have our own ways of loving our fur buddies. Those who have these little angels in their lives are truly blessed for they shower us with an abundance of unconditional love that is rare to find these days.

Ishmeet Chandiok, a former Five Star Chef also loves his pet, Harley, very much. Ishmeet is an alumnus of the Institute of Hotel Management, Mumbai, and has worked with brands like Hyatt, JW Marriott, and Kingfisher Airlines. Being a chef, he has always been best at showing his love for his food and since he loved Harley, he chose to do the same for him. Ishmeet started with a little research to find out what he could cook for his pet.

Since then Ishmeet gradually started to experiment with different ingredients to make food for Harley. This became the foundation of what he does today. From full meals to treats, to cakes, the numero uno dog chef created an entire four-course meal for a dog.

Today Ishmeet owns two pets – Harley and Pixie but the former happens to be the first pet of his own. He came into Ishmeet’s life in 2009.

“It was around 2009 when I was working with Kingfisher when Harley made his entry into my life. It was at a construction site near the office when I first saw Harley. Surprisingly, around this time I was also looking to adopt a puppy.”

In the beginning, Ishmeet was inexperienced with pets and so he too started to feed Harley with regular packaged dog food but Harley seemed to want variety.

“Being a first-time pet parent, like many others, I also took whatever my vet and the dog store owners said to be gospel truth. I noticed that Harley would avoid the pellets and wait for us to finish our meal so he could get leftover scraps from us. I remember thinking that I would not like to eat something dry and extruded every day and so thought of making something fresh for Harley,” says Ishmeet.

Ishmeet was born in a Parsi-Sikh family where he had his very first furry companion – Goldie on whose back Ishmeet, as a child, often rode. Ishmeet remembers how, in the days before the advent of packaged dog-food, they would be fed whatever the family ate. Observing Harley, Ishmeet related his past memories to his food experiments.

Harley was really enjoying the home-cooked meals by Ishmeet but he seemed to be getting leaner and this alarmed Ishmeet. To his surprise, Harley was actually in his best shape.

According to a study published by the European Union, Dr. Gerard Lippert and Bruno Sapy, who are doctors in Belgium, dogs on a home-styled diet will live, on average, three years longer than dogs on a pellet diet.

Soon Ishmeet started to cook for other pet owners in Mumbai. The response was good and everyone started to know Ishmeet as a dog chef. He started to get calls and became a social media celebrity and that’s how he started his own brand – Harley’s Corner.

“It was a big hit and soon I started getting calls from pet parents enquiring about what I was cooking and if they could place an order with me. That is how my ready-to-eat wet dog food brand was born,” the dog chef says.

“Dog chef soon became my social media identity. I realized I was far happier cooking for dogs than humans. I have a very loyal customer base in them. They polish off the meal and sit beside you waiting for their next,” he added.

In 2010, Ishmeet started to deliver the meals via Mumbai’s prompt dabbawala’s. His business scaled up so much that he also launched a dry food variant.

“Having done this for about two years, I realized that if I continued working from home I would not be able to scale up production and so in 2012, I launched the packaged food variant,” Ishmeet says.

Harley Corner’s food packets have a shelf life of one year, when stored at room temperature, with no preservatives or additives, and are shipped across the country.

That was not it. The chef still felt like lacking knowledge in pet nutrition and so he enrolled himself for a course.

“I was unable to find a canine nutritionist in India and that led to me completing a four-and-a-half month course being offered by The University of Massachusetts.”

Today Harley’s Corner offers regular meals for dogs and also treats like cakes, ice creams, soups, and more. There are three subscription models for customers – a monthly plan, which has 30 meals costs Rs. 3,900, the three-month plan consists of 95 meals and costs about Rs. 11,400 and the six-month plan with 190 meals cost Rs. 22,800. Harley’s Corner has the HACCP (Hazard Analysis & Critical Points) and FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approval.

Speaking of his future plans, Ishmeet shared, “Humans come second for me, I’d love to continue cooking for dogs. I also want to open a restaurant where you can bring your dog, order for yourself along with your dogs.”

“More than all that, I would never sell anything that Harley would not be fed,” he concluded.