Molly Irani on Hospitality, Leadership & the Women Who Shape the Food World

International Women's Day 2025 Feature: Molly Irani

You helped start Chai Pani and have been the heart behind customer service and experience. What inspired you to create spaces that feel so welcoming and special?

I grew up in a family-run restaurant, so the joy that can be found in service had its hooks in me from as far back as I can remember.

When I was in college, I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, and discovered amazing restaurants, but service interactions felt different from what I experienced growing up in the South.

I missed the warmth of Southern Hospitality. So, when we started the first Chai Pani, I wanted to bring the best of those touchstones into our space and create a warm environment where everyone felt genuinely welcome.

The restaurant and food business can be tough, especially for women. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced, and how did you overcome them?

My experience growing up in a restaurant and then working in many as a young adult immersed me in the ways that the industry was stuck in outdated management strategies. The industry was known for toxic and even abusive work environments. 

From the very beginning, we aimed to do things differently.

My husband, Meherwan and I led the team with our own personal strengths that were in very different areas. He was the executive chef and CEO — the one flying the airplane while we were still building it.

I was the front of house leader and director of hospitality, but my main job was to sew the parachutes to keep us all safe and comfortable (we were, after all, flying in a half-built airplane). We ran our growing mini food empire by leaning into the strengths that we both naturally brought to the table, and we set out to change the things that were broken in our industry.

We didn’t follow our industry's “best practices” — we wrote our own.

For me, that meant creating work environments that people want to be in. I have an undergraduate degree in psychology, so I relied on that to influence what we built. I anchored everything around the notion of care: of each other, our suppliers, farmers, neighbors, communities and our guests.

I aim to create a work environment that people look forward to being in — one where they feel supported and able to be themselves. This includes making space for all of our voices around the table.

Spicewalla is all about flavour, quality, connection & community. How do those same values shape the way you think about hospitality and leadership?

Helping bring people together around great food brings me joy. Whether that’s in our restaurant spaces or over a homecooked meal with fragrant spices.

Making time to be together—nourishing ourselves with fresh food, gathering together in the third spaces of restaurants, or at our own dining tables- enhances our well-being.

Looking back, what’s one lesson from your early days at Chai Pani that still guides you today?

It’s always been about our people.

Creating a work culture where people feel cared for inspires them to do great work and pay it forward to our customers. This creates ripples in the pond—where we can contribute one good deed through an act of kindness that ripples out and changes someone's day. Those small acts of kindness add up and make a difference in the world.

Weaving practices into our management strategies that enhance this approach remains our goal. In our essence, we are still the same business we were 15 years ago when I ran the register at Chai Pani. We’ve grown in size, scope and mission over the years, but we’re still an innovative, scrappy organization trying to make a positive impact in the world.

You’ve built businesses that feel like home for so many. What does great hospitality mean to you?

Thank you for that question! Building a business that feels like home has been one of my main goals.

I believe great hospitality is all about helping people feel a sense of belonging and connection. That can be to a product that delights or the invitation to gather around a table in a restaurant. It’s about noticing the details that make people feel welcome and cared for. Great hospitality is a mission that sparks joy and connection in the world—way beyond the walls of a restaurant.

Spicewalla and Chai Pani have grown into something incredible. What has been the most rewarding part of this journey?

The people!

I consider myself lucky beyond description to LOVE the people I work with. Our teams show up with their whole hearts. Seeing them in action and working alongside them absolutely thrills me. 

You work with an amazing team, many of whom are women. What do mentorship and leadership mean to you in this industry?

It means holding space for women to trust their own voices and then listening to them.

Instead of telling women to “lean in” to a man’s world in order to be heard, or talk like a man (the advice so often offered to women in business) - I believe a more impactful approach is when we ALL lean in toward our own highest selves and then listen with respect.

We’ve fostered an inclusive business culture by encouraging women's voices, sharing them, and then listening to them. 

If you could share a chai and a conversation with any woman—past or present—who would it be, and why?

This question flattens me because there are so many fascinating women in our history to choose from!

But, ok, in current times, I would want to share a chai with Michelle Obama.

I think she’s an inspiring female leader who found a way to share a voice of her own despite the historical model of the first lady being primarily background support for the president. She speaks from a place of authenticity, and I believe that she means what she says. I respect her grounded strength and ability to speak her truth amidst the fog of division in politics.

What is one of your favorite food memories and why?

I love to bake. A good homemade cookie hot out of the oven can soften many hard days. 

I learned to bake from my mother, and I always make my daughter’s favorite cookies when she comes home (she’s all grown up now and lives in another city). But on her last visit home, she made me cookies, and I relished watching her in the kitchen while she experimented with some new recipes.

It brought me so much happiness to see this tradition passed down to her and to watch her make them in her own style.

Cooking for people is a gift we can offer, a way of saying I love you through a bite of something nurturing and yummy. 

Want to bake some of Molly's favorite cookies?
Check out her recipe for Ginger Molasses Cookies, or her Mom's Sugar Cookie recipe ❤️

Looking ahead, what excites you most about Spicewalla's future and the role women will play in shaping the food world?

Spicewalla was first inspired by Meherwan’s childhood in India, where spices are treated like produce—bought fresh, roasted and ground daily in kitchens across India.

I’ll never forget the first time his mom visited us from India and scoffed at our post–college half-empty spice cabinet lined with stale, old spices in bottles that had probably been sitting for years on a warehouse shelf before sitting on ours.

She stocked us up on fresh spices, and the difference was astounding. That story is something we want to keep sharing so that everyone can experience the difference it makes in their cooking.

In India, this tradition is passed down by the women; they hold the food stories and infuse them into future generations. Meherwan and I were both raised by strong, independent entrepreneur mothers who also happen to be world-class home cooks.

When we founded Spicewalla, we wanted to share the love of fresh spices and home cooking that they provided us. Spicewalla’s foundation was built on that story, and it has been enhanced from the beginning by the many women who help run it.

It thrills me to see what Spicewalla has grown into, influenced in great part by brilliant women who have been creatively capturing food stories and sharing them while helping grow a thriving company built upon a foundation of care.