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When mithai demand surges, where does food safety get stretched?
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Tuesday, 06 October, 2026, 16 : 00 PM [IST]
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Ashwin Bhadri
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A few days before a festival, a sweet shop becomes a very different business. The kitchen starts earlier. Trays that should last all day are empty by lunch. Somebody is always counting milk, khoya, ghee, sugar and dry fruit, wondering if there's enough for the next batch. Customers see the bright boxes and the long queue. They don't see any of that.
Every festive season, the conversation turns to adulterated sweets, and for good reason. Milk, khoya and ghee become harder to manage when demand jumps. But after years of working with food businesses, I've started asking something different. Not just "was this sweet adulterated? but what changed in the process when the shop suddenly had to make so much more?
Procurement changes first
It usually starts with sourcing. A shop that buys from two suppliers needs a third. The regular khoya supplier runs short. More milk has to be arranged at short notice, and the quantities coming through the door are bigger than the team is used to handling.
None of that is wrong. Preparing for demand is what a business should do. The trouble starts when buying scales up and the checks don't. Was the new supplier verified? Was the khoya checked when it arrived? Was it stored properly? Did the same controls hold when the volume doubled?
Maharashtra has stepped up enforcement during festive periods, with checks on milk, dairy products and sweets. In the recent Ganeshotsav drive, officials collected samples of milk, khoya, ghee and sweets and seized more than 4,000 kg of dairy and sweet products across the state. That kind of enforcement is necessary. Still, I keep thinking about what comes before the inspector arrives: what happened when those ingredients first came in?
Small shortcuts, bigger risks
When a kitchen takes on hundreds of extra orders, its routine bends. Equipment runs back-to-back. Shifts get longer. Storage fills up, and ingredients and finished sweets move in and out faster than usual.
Then small things slip. A cleaning step gets pushed to later. A batch sits longer than it should. A raw material is accepted without a proper check because nobody has time to stop the line.
None of these looks serious on its own. Food-safety failures rarely start with one dramatic mistake. They build from several small gaps, each easier to ignore when the pressure is on. So festive readiness can't be judged by production capacity alone. A kitchen may be able to make twice the mithai, but can its people, storage and hygiene controls keep the same discipline at that volume?
Testing finds problems. Traceability explains them.
Testing matters. It tells you whether a sample meets the required standard. What it can't tell you is how that product was made.
If something turns up in a batch of sweets, the business has to answer a string of questions. Where did the ingredients come from? How were they received and stored? Which batches used them? Who handled the product, and where did the finished sweets go? A business should be able to trace backwards from a finished sweet to its ingredients and suppliers, and forwards to wherever the affected batch was sent, including other products made with the same ingredients. In a festive rush, with more volume moving in less time, that visibility matters even more.
Testing tells you what was found in a sample. Traceability helps you work out what happened before the sample was taken.
Neither replaces the other. Testing gives you evidence, and supplier checks, storage controls, production records and traceability help you understand the risks behind it. Nobody can build these systems after a complaint arrives. They need to exist before the first extra batch goes on the stove.
Growth shouldn't cost you control
I don't think consumers should eye every box of mithai with suspicion, and I don't think higher production is a problem in itself. Festive demand is good for the industry. It keeps kitchens busy, creates seasonal jobs and is part of how India celebrates.
The challenge is making sure food-safety discipline grows with production. Before the rush, a business should know where its ingredients are coming from, how incoming material will be checked, how storage will be managed, who owns hygiene controls and what happens when a batch fails a check. Customers won't see any of that, but it shapes what ends up in their box.
A sweet isn't made safe at the display counter. Its safety is set much earlier, by the supplier, the person who received the ingredients, the team that handled them and the process in the kitchen. So, when the festive rush peaks, are we only producing more, or are we controlling more?
(The author is CEO at Equinox Labs)
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