An office with vintage furniture, hardwood flooring and expansive windows that overlooks a garden is a creative utopia. A workspace such as this belongs to Rachel Goenka, founder and CEO of the hospitality venture, The Chocolate Spoon Company.
The latter is the parent company of several food businesses, restaurants, delivery services and cloud kitchens in Mumbai and Pune. Goenka shares with Lounge how she spent a large part of the lockdown working from this haven in Goa. Edited excerpts.
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Describe your current workspace.
I work from our family office in Goa which is a beautiful space. It’s serene and has a lot of natural light streaming in through large French windows. It overlooks the garden, so you are surrounded by greenery which is what I love the most about it.
Has it always been this way, or has it evolved over the years?
It’s evolved over time, with the addition of collectibles and memorabilia. The family is nuts about vintage cars so there are a lot of things related to cars in this room. There used to be a huge collection of miniature cars which my son has happily taken to add to his collection.
How would you define your daily relationship with this space?
I spent six months during the lockdown in Goa and this became my personal space to work from. It’s quiet and peaceful and it’s a great place to ideate and write. All my Zoom meetings, Instagram lives and writing during the lockdown happened in this space.
Tell us about a major work project that you did from here.
I wrote a large part of my book, Adventures with Mithai, from this study. A lot of my articles too were written from here.
If you were to trade this place for another, what would it be?
I love working out of kitchens. I always have a large table in my kitchens where I can surround myself with recipe books. It’s a great place to ideate from, especially if one is working on new menus or writing about food. You’re in the thick of where food is created, so for me that works best.
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