Daig Food vs Lunch Boxes: Which Should Your Office Order?
20 August 2026 · Updated 20 October 2026
Once an office settles on a plan and a price, the second question is always the same: daig ya boxes?
Both camps feel strongly about it. The daig camp says food tastes better served hot from one pot and hates paying for packaging. The box camp says grown professionals shouldn't be queuing with plates at 1 pm. Both are a little bit right, so here is the honest comparison we give offices on WhatsApp every week — written down properly, math included.
What daig service actually means
Your team's food arrives in shared deghs — cooked that morning, lids on, and still properly hot, because a full degh holds its heat far better than any individual box does. Someone at the office serves, everyone eats together, and we collect the empty deghs when we bring the next day's food.
The price advantage is simple: daig service costs nothing extra. The per-head rate on your plan is the whole bill. It's also the least wasteful option by far — one degh instead of twenty boxes a day, every day.
The honest downsides: you need a spot to serve, plates and spoons at the office, and someone willing to do the serving. Portions are self-managed too — in every office there's one friend who takes the extra kabab. If your team eats together at a fixed break time, none of this is a real problem. If lunch happens in shifts, it starts to be.
What box service actually means
Every person gets an individual box — and here we're picky, because this is where cheap catering shows its true face. We pack in sturdy, food-grade PVC boxes, not the thin throw-away kind that folds into the delivery bag and leaks qorma onto someone's keyboard. That box costs Rs. 20 per head per day on top of your plan rate, and it's the only extra charge we have.
What you get for it: fixed, fair portions for everyone; no serving, no plates, no cleanup; and lunch that can go floor by floor or back to a desk. For offices spread across several floors, with a formal front-of-house, or with people who genuinely eat at their seats, boxes are usually the right call.
The honest downsides: the Rs. 20, more packaging waste than a degh will ever produce — and heat. A box has more surface and less food than a degh, so it cools faster. Boxes that sit at reception for two hours waiting to be collected are exactly how "the food was cold" complaints start; we went through where heat actually goes in why office food arrives cold.
The monthly math, side by side
Take a team of fifteen on our Silver plan (Rs. 300 per head), eating Monday to Friday — about twenty-two serving days:
- Daig service: 300 × 15 × 22 = Rs. 99,000 a month. Done.
- Box service: (300 + 20) × 15 × 22 = Rs. 105,600 a month — Rs. 6,600 more, or Rs. 440 per person.
That's the entire difference. Rs. 440 per person per month buys convenience and fixed portions; skipping it buys nothing except the same food served the traditional way. Neither answer is wrong — it's a culture question, not a catering question. The full picture of what a plan costs is in our monthly plans guide.
When your team eats in waves
The simple rule — eat together, take daig; eat apart, take boxes — breaks down in one kind of workplace: the one where people eat in waves, a few at a time, across two or three hours. Call centres, hospitals and production floors all work this way.
There, the deciding question is the microwave. If boxes have to be reheated and the whole floor shares one or two microwaves, boxes turn into a queue at the pantry. A closed degh needs no reheating at all, so each wave serves itself and goes back to work. If people eat at their seats and nobody reheats, boxes work fine. And if your team spreads its lunch across an hour in one office, boxes usually win — don't insist on a degh for the last person to eat cold.
Many places end up with a mix: a degh for the canteen or pantry, and boxes for the people who can't leave their seat or their ward. We wrote about how that runs in call centres and hospitals and clinics.
How to decide in one minute
Pick daig if: your team eats together at one break time, you have a serving spot and plates, and the budget-minded side of the office is loud.
Pick boxes if: the team is spread across floors, clients walk through your office at lunch time, people eat at their desks, or nobody wants to own the serving job.
Pick a mix if: some people eat together and some can't leave their post.
Still not sure? Tell us how your office actually eats — where, and between what times — and we'll suggest one. Switching later is easy.
Questions offices ask about this
Is the Rs. 20 charged per box or per day? Per head, per serving day. One person, one box, one lunch — Rs. 20. It's on top of the plan rate, and it's our only extra charge, as covered in the full cost breakdown.
Can we start with daig and switch to boxes later? Yes. Tell us and we adjust from the next delivery. Plenty of offices try both in their first month and settle on what fits.
Do you take the deghs back? Yes — we collect the empties when we drop the next day's food. You never store our cookware for long.
Can we microwave the boxes? They're sturdy food-grade PVC meant for serving, and the food arrives hot. If your office does reheat, transfer the food to a plate first — and if everyone is reheating, read the section on waves above.
Does the choice change the food? Not one bit. Same kitchen, same degh, same morning's cooking — the only difference is what it travels in.
The bottom line
Daig is cheaper, hotter and cleaner for the planet. Boxes are neater, fairer and easier to run. Choose based on how — and when — your office actually eats, not on what sounds more professional.
Whichever side you land on, the menus and rates are public at feastpilaf.com/meal-plans, the build-your-own planner works out the box charge automatically if you want it, and the first sample lunch for your office is on us — WhatsApp 0315 9093990.