Somewhere in the early 2000s, Army HQ posted me as a Company Commander in J&K.

The mandate was clear. A large fleet of heavy-load carriers. Troops and war-like stores to be moved at a moment’s notice. Every vehicle is in ship shape always. Maximum availability at all times. No excuses.

Technically demanding. Operationally critical. High stakes in a high threat zone.

Exactly what I was trained for.

Then the Army did what the Army does best.

On top of everything else on my plate, it also put me in charge of the Station Bakery.

A bakery. Me. The man who had forgotten how to make a proper cup of tea because Officers’ Mess cooks had spoiled me for years. My mother’s insistence that I learn household skills as a teenager long forgotten. Buried somewhere under a decade-plus of someone else doing the cooking.

But orders are orders. You don’t question. You execute.

The Challenge

The Station Bakery was a fledgling enterprise. Its job was to provide basic confectionery items to all ranks in a large military station. Plus, the daily supply of bread to officers as part of their entitled rations. Sounds simple enough. It wasn’t.

The clientele? Jawans. NCOs. Officers. Their families. And yes, the officers’ ladies, including the First Lady of the station, who was often the Chief Guest at Army School events.

But here’s the thing. Nobody was complaining. Nobody was demanding better. People had accepted whatever was available because that’s all they could access, given the circumstances.

My CO was a wizard in matters culinary. He backed me completely. Gave me room to experiment. Picked me up when I stumbled. That support was everything.

So I started.

Tried. Failed. Tried again.

The Reality on the Ground

The operation ran on uniformed men like me. Storekeepers. Supervisors. And one civilian baker.

That Baker was the linchpin. And he knew it.

Every few months, some civil bakery in town would dangle a few hundred rupees more. And our man would start making noises about jumping ship. Usually, the night before a large Mess Party order. Or right before a big celebration at the Army School.

Cue frantic persuasion. Sometimes an extra tot of rum. Sometimes a firm word or two. Whatever it took to keep the show running.

This was crisis management before I knew the term.

Learning the Trade

Slowly, I picked things up.

How to get the sponge just right. The exact ratio of ingredients. Where to source quality stuff. Which vendors were reliable and which ones would let you down when it mattered most?

What fancy folks now call Vendor Relationship Management was simple logic back then. Pay on time, and they will deliver. Build a relationship, and they will prioritise you. No jargon. Just good sense.

Then I Started Observing

Here’s the thing. The officers and their families weren’t clueless. These were educated, well-travelled people. They had been posted across the country. The ladies had seen good bakeries in Delhi, Pune,and Bangalore. They knew exactly what quality looked like.

But this was J&K. Remote. Restricted. Terrorism a daily reality.

So they shrugged. A pragmatic, resigned shrug. This is a difficult posting. We can’t expect the same things here. We’ll make do with what’s available.

Everyone had accepted the constraints as final.

Now, once in charge and getting a grip of things, I started viewing the situation from an entrepreneur’s perspective rather than the straightforward fauji one I had worn till now.

I noticed that service personnel had strict limitations on travelling to the local market. The threat perception was real. Families couldn’t just step out for a treat.

I noticed that the residential colonies were spread across a large land mass, geographically far from the main shopping centre. The small bakery outlet sat in the CSD complex. For many families, it was a long, arduous trip. By the end of it, the only emotion was fatigue.

And then the insight hit me.

People weren’t staying away because they didn’t want what we offered. They were staying away because they couldn’t easily get to us.

The constraint wasn’t desire. It was access.

Reframing the Problem

Once I saw it that way, the solution became obvious.

If they can’t come to the bakery, the bakery must go to them.

I took a cue from what already existed on the station. The mobile veggie and fruit shops that units ran as station amenities. The MH bus picked up patients and ferried them to and from the hospital. These concepts worked. People relied on them.

But this one had to be bigger. Better organised. A signature service.

We started with one vehicle. A mobile van. But a van alone wasn’t enough. The residential colonies were vast. How would people know when it arrived? How would they plan their purchase?

I designed a system.

Designated stops across each colony. A fixed timetable. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Stops at 11am, 2pm, 4pm. Signages were got put up at each location with dates, days, and times clearly displayed.

Now families could plan. They knew exactly when the van would come and where it would stop. No guessing. No waiting around. No missed opportunities.

But there was still one problem. Even with a schedule, people indoors might miss the van. The colonies were large. Sound doesn’t carry well.

So I fitted a unique horn. A sing-song pressure horn. A signature tune you could hear from afar. The moment that tune floated through the air, people knew. The bakery is here.

Troops knew when to expect us. Officers’ quarters knew when to send the kids down. Families started waiting for that tune.

As demand grew, we kept adding more vehicles. What started with one van became a small fleet.

Observing What People Desired

The menu expansion came from observation, too.

I watched my own kids. When I went back home, what did they ask for? What goodies did they desire? Pizzas. Pastries. Croissants. Things they had tasted in bigger cities.

And then the extrapolation. If my kids want this, other kids on the station want this too. Goodies apply to all ages. The officers’ wives missed these things, too. So did the NCOs’ families.

We added pizzas. Pastries. Croissants for those who wanted something continental. Pizza bases for families who wanted to make their own at home.

I collected orders from every official function on the station. Birthday parties, Mess events, school celebrations, ladies’ club gatherings. If there was an occasion, we were the caterers.

The menu expanded week by week.

Puffs. Veg, egg, chicken. Patties. Cream rolls. Éclairs. Swiss rolls. Fruit cake. Plum cake for Christmas. Nankhatai for the old timers. Cookies and biscuits by the jar. Doughnuts that the kids went crazy for. Jam tarts. Cream horns. Apple pie. Brownies. Muffins.

Khari biscuits and soup sticks for the tea time crowd. Fan pastry for those who liked it flaky. Hot dog rolls and burger buns. Sandwiches, veg and non-veg. Cutlets. Chicken rolls. Mutton rolls.

The menu became a catalogue.

Learning from the Baker

Not every insight came from me.

You know, when you bake a rectangular sponge and cut out circular layers for a cake? Those leftover shreds and edges?

The Baker pulled me aside one day. Sir, we can monetise even this. The shreds. The leftover cream used for icing. Nothing needs to go to waste.

We turned the shreds into puddings served in small cups. Breadcrumbs for cutlets. Every bit was accounted for. Every bit was sold.

Observation doesn’t always mean watching customers. Sometimes it means listening to the person closest to the product.

Designing the Experience

Then came the opportunity I had been waiting for.

I designed and built Dhruva Bakery from scratch.

Not a renovation. Not an upgrade. A brand new retail outlet conceived from the ground up.

But first, I looked hard at what existed.

The old setup was drab. One counter. Hardly any chairs. Cold. Lighting was just two tubelights. Typical make-do. The kind of place you walked into, grabbed what you needed, and walked out. No reason to linger.

I asked myself: Why should constraints define the experience? Just because this is a remote, restricted posting, does that mean families don’t deserve something better? Something that feels elevated?

I became the architect. I drew the shape, the contours, the layout. Facility planning. Counter design. Furniture selection. Flow of customers. Display of products. The entire concept.

I modelled it on what a ‘desi McDonald’s‘ might look like. Bright. Clean. Welcoming. A place where you wanted to sit and spend time. Not just grab and go. Live counters where you could watch your order being made. The smell of fresh bread and pastries pulling you in from the corner like the Bakery at Barlowganj near Mussoorie did during my school days hikes from DehraDun.

This was before franchise models had really opened up in India. There were no such joints even outside the station at that time. But I wanted to give families at the station an experience that matched anything they might have seen in a big city. Maybe even better.

I still distinctly remember one afternoon during construction. The flooring was still dug up. The windows were gone, just open spaces where the bay windows would eventually sit. Floor tiles were spread out on the ground, shortlisted samples waiting for a final choice.

And in walked the Top Man. The GOC himself.

He looked around. Then he sat down on the windowsill. Just like that. My CO joined him. And there the three of us were. The Big Boss, my CO, and I. Sitting in a half-built bakery with no flooring and no windows. Discussing tiles and layouts, and what this place could become.

I was a half-colonel. A middle rung officer. And here were these two senior officers, giving me their time, their attention, their presence.

That moment stays with me even now.

So much leverage. So much support. So much care and guidance were extended to a junior. I am humbled just thinking about it even now.

Trust. That is what they displayed towards me. Overly, generously, completely.

We trust you, Zahl. Get the job done.

When you have that kind of weight on your shoulders, adrenaline flows day and night. You cannot let them down. You will not let them down.

We set up the outlet right next to the Cinema Hall in the Station CSD complex. Prime real estate. Every jawan, every family, every officer walked past it on their way to watch a film or pick up their monthly rations.

The inauguration was a proud day.

And sales? They didn’t just pick up.

They roared.

Many Moons Later

Years passed. Postings changed. Life moved on.

Then one day, I found myself back at that station.

I walked to the CSD complex. Turned the corner. And there it was.

Dhruva Bakery. Still standing. Still thriving. Bigger than I had ever imagined it could become. What I had started as a struggling, fledgling operation was now an institution.

I stood there for a long moment. Watching families walk in. Kids pointing at the display. Ladies ordering cakes for weekend parties.

I smiled.

The Formal Training

Years after that, I was fortunate to learn Design Thinking formally from my mentor and guru, Harini Sreenivasan.

And I smiled again.

Because of everything she taught me, I recognised.

Observe the user. Understand their constraints. Reframe the problem. Prototype solutions. Iterate based on what works.

The mobile van? That was empathy. Understanding that access, not desire, was the barrier.

The timetable and signage? That was designing for predictability. Letting users plan.

The signature horn? That was solving the last mile. Ensuring the solution actually reached the intended audience.

The menu expansion? That was observing unspoken desires. Starting with my own kids and extrapolating.

The zero-waste approach? That was listening to the person closest to the product.

Dhruva Bakery itself? That was experience design. Refusing to let constraints define what people deserved.

I had practised the discipline long before I learned its name.

The Lesson

You don’t need to know the theory to apply the principle.

Observe. Truly observe. Not just ask people what they want, but watch what they do, notice what holds them back, see what they’ve stopped complaining about because they’ve accepted it as unchangeable.

Reframe. The problem is rarely what it appears to be on the surface. Dig deeper. Find the real constraint.

Prototype. Try something. See if it works. If it doesn’t, try something else.

Iterate. Keep refining. Keep listening. Keep watching.

That bakery in a military station in J&K taught me more about Design Thinking than any classroom ever could.

Sometimes the best training ground is the one you never expected.