• Our Story

    EARLY ON

    Arvinda Chauhan was born to cook. As far as she can remember, she has cooked every single day. At the age of seven, she lost her mother and was needed in the kitchen to help her grandmother prepare meals for her grandfather and four siblings, while her father was away studying in Europe. She helped to grind spices using a mortar and pestle, and learned to prepare chapatis on a chulha, a rustic earthen stove heated by fire. For Arvinda, what started out as a necessity, later grew into her lifelong love of home Indian cooking.

    PASSION FOR COOKING GROWS

    Once into family life, Arvinda developed her skills as an Indian cook, learning to create curries as per traditional family recipes. Through understanding the intricacies and nuances of spices, she used this knowledge to cook delicious curries and dals that quickly became family favourites. She experimented and created new recipes, and lovingly churned out complete Indian meals for family, colleagues and friends including savoury appetizers with chutneys, a dozen different types of traditional Indian flatbreads, fragrant jeweled basmati rice and of course, delectable Indian sweets. She also delved into other world cuisines spanning from regional Oaxacan Mexican to cooking traditions from the Far East. She treated her family to both Indian and international homemade meals, every single day.

  • Cooking Classes

    A SPARK OF INSPIRATION

    In 1993 at a Canada Day festival, Arvinda, Paresh and Preena volunteered to prepare Indian snacks to sell to raise funds for a women’s charity. The festivalgoers were enticed and intrigued by these Indian flavours, hungry for the know-how to make these delicious savoury pakoras and samosas at home. Enquiry after enquiry, Arvinda promptly offered ‘ad hoc’ cooking demos at the booth, enthusiastically describing how to make these tasty appetizers with only a few simple ingredients. The patrons scratched these directions out on napkins, craving to learn more about Indian cooking. Throughout the weekend, more and more people enquired about Indian cooking lessons which sparked the family's entrepreneurial spirits. Arvinda was inspired and truly wanted to help others learn about the incredible cuisine of India.

    HEALTHY GOURMET INDIAN COOKING

    Over that summer, the mother-and-daughter duo worked to put together a series of cooking classes to run that coming fall. Under the name, Healthy Gourmet Indian Cooking, they created their new-found Indian cooking school. At a time when Indian cooking was relatively unknown, Arvinda aspired to share her knowledge and passion for Indian cuisine with others, demonstrating how to prepare healthy Indian foods at home, with easy cooking methods. Of utmost importance, Arvinda sought to teach about spices, the cornerstone of traditional Indian cooking. In an eight-week Indian Beginner's Cooking course, participants learned about the storied history of spices but most importantly, she emphasized that quality spices and ingredients are essential for the best tasting Indian foods. Arvinda and Preena traveled to the exotic spice growing regions of India and Sri Lanka to understand how spices are cultivated, harvested and brought to market, meeting passionate farmers, traders and spice merchants along the way.

  • Indian Spice Blends

    FROM CUSTOMER DEMAND...

    During Arvinda’s cooking classes, her students noticed the superior freshness and quality of the spices she used, and always requested to purchase them directly from her. They also sought advice on how to make Indian cooking easier, prompting Arvinda to mix fresh batches of masalas (mixture of spices) for her students to try. The masalas became so popular with the students, they would tell Preena and her brother Paresh, “you should bring them to market!”. The siblings put that idea on the backburner but talked about it from time to time.

    ...A SPICE COMPANY IS BORN!

    In the mid-2000s while a Masters student, Preena received a small amount of funds to start-up a small business. Inspired by the show, Recipe for Success that profiled entrepreneurs who were successful in bringing a family recipe to market, Paresh and Preena launched Arvinda’s Indian spice blends. With their savings in-hand, they bootstrapped their start-up and found a small industrial unit they converted into a food production facility. Their first showing of Arvinda’s masalas was at the Asian Food Expo which won the likes of celebrity chefs asking to buy foodservice sizes of their masalas for their acclaimed restaurants in Toronto.

  • Spicing Things Up!

    PUSHING FORWARD

    At the time of Arvinda’s launch in the mid-2000s, many customers didn’t know what a masala was, sometimes mistaking the word masala for marsala, the famous Sicilian wine. Paresh and Preena tirelessly worked to introduce their blends to the market which was dominated by Indian convenience-based products. They pushed forward and worked at educating customers how to make healthy and easy curries from scratch, using spices at countless cooking demonstrations, farmers’ markets, trade shows and culinary events. Their efforts paid off and they started to gain the attention from major grocery chains, specialty retailers and eventually, distinguished retailers in the United Kingdom and France, including the venerable Harrod’s. At the same time, Arvinda’s Indian cooking classes attracted larger audiences with participants attending from Brazil to Germany, US to Japan, and they also started taking groups of their students on culinary trips to India, meeting with local chefs to share with them an immersive Indian cooking experience.

    TURNING UP THE HEAT

    The Arvinda’s brand continues to shake things up on their spice journey to continue to educate and inspire others about cooking with powerful and amazing Indian spices. Paresh and Preena launched a new line of spices under the Arvinda’s brand, called Bombay Shake—the original spice seasoning. Preena then hosted a television series called, Masala Magic Recipes for two seasons, demonstrating how masalas can create endless Indian vegetarian specialties, and later, the siblings opened up a spice boutique and masala chai café, called Arvinda’s Spices & Chai. Today, Arvinda’s loyal and passionate following continues to grow amongst foodies and home cooks who aspire to create delicious, traditional and healthy Indian foods at home, and most recently they're excited to share their Indian cooking journey through their forthcoming cookbook, New Indian Basics.

  • Our Mantra

    In Sanskrit, the word mantra has several meanings, one being the repetition of a word to gain a connection to the universal consciousness, which helps one to gain concentration within meditation.

    Outside of India, the word mantra has taken on a slightly different meaning and is known as a statement that is spoken or practiced frequently, commonly understood as “words to live by.”

  • These are our words and values

  • Cooking delicious meals for family and friends is a way of showing kindness towards the ones we love.

    Sharing food with others is one of the greatest gifts of all!

  • Taking the time to cook healthy meals is time well spent.

    Investing in your health with nourishing foods is one of the best things you can do for your body, mind and spirit. Your future self will thank you later.

  • We are proud of our culinary traditions and want to share our family recipes with you.

    Arvinda’s spirit of sharing started through her cooking classes and continues through our masalas. With Arvinda's, we hope you feel inspired to cook healthy, delicious spice-filled meals at home!

  • Our cornerstones are freshness, quality and tradition.

    When your inputs are high quality spices, fresh quality ingredients and cooking according to time-honoured traditions, the results are rewarding.

  • Each and every spice we use is hand-selected for flavour and quality.

    We constantly evaluate our ingredients for quality and optimal flavour. Superior quality and bold flavours are our trademarks.

  • We are passionate about bridging Indian cuisine with local ingredients.

    This is our passion! We use Ontario garlic and Prairie-grown coriander and mustard seeds, and continually try to source as many locally grown ingredients as they become available.

  • We are excited to share and exchange recipe ideas with our customers.

    We love having a dialogue of cooking and food with our lovely customers. We are always inspired to hear about your cooking creations and the creative ways you are cooking with Arvinda’s masalas!

  • Pay it forward.

    We're blessed to have had much support, kindness and encouragement from many people in our spice journey! We strive to lend support to community organizations and events throughout the year and donate spices to local women’s and men's shelters, food banks, soup kitchens and charitable food organizations. We’ve participated in Eat to the Beat, Canadian Cancer Society’s fundraiser since 1995 and donate to organizations such as FoodShare.

  • Environmental commitments.

    Our family’s history of caring for the environment goes back decades and we’ve translated the same ethos at Arvinda’s and reduce and reuse whatever we can at every level. Our sacred Mother Earth is in our thoughts with the decisions we make and we’re continually improving to minimize our environmental footprint, adapting as climate change is a top issue of the 21st century.

Our Inspiration

We've had beautiful blessings, warmth and Ayurvedic wisdom lent from our great-grandfather, Dada and grandfather. The kindest of spirits, thank you for everything!