This Indian store started in Topeka selling traditional Indian goods but expanded to Lawrence and transformed into a multifaceted business: a grocery, restaurant, health and beauty store, and tobacco shop.
| 2019 Q3 | story by Bob Luder | photos by Steven Hertzog
Amrutha Ravikumar, owner of Cosmos Indian Store
When Amrutha Ravikumar made the permanent move to Middle America from her native India in 1995, she figured she had everything she needed. She was reunited with her husband, who had moved to the area years earlier to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Kansas (KU). With a master’s degree herself from a university in India, she had a good job awaiting her in information technology with the State of Kansas. She had a nice home in Topeka, two stable incomes. She seemed to have it all.
Except, there was one thing missing: no taste of home and nowhere—at least, not nearby—to obtain it.
“When I came here in 1995, there was no Indian store in Topeka … none,” Ravikumar says. “People were traveling to Kansas City to the one Indian store in the city. We had to travel for every small need.”
Rather than continue burning fuel back and forth on Interstate 70 between Topeka and Kansas City, Ravikumar decided to take matters into her own hands. Despite having no business education, training or experience in running a business, she opened Cosmos Indian Store in Topeka in 2000. It would carry a variety of traditional Indian groceries, clothing and personal items, giving the growing Indian population—in particular those born and raised in the southern half of the country, near Ravi Kumar’s hometown of Chennai—a place to shop and purchase authentic goods from home.
“I thought it would be a good opportunity to hire some people,” she says. “We started with two employees, but when we started our online shipping and e-commerce business, we had to hire three to four more to help with shipping.”
When the Ravi Kumars’ oldest daughter was ready to enter KU in 2010, the family moved to Lawrence and opened a second Cosmos location on Massachusetts Street. That lasted but a couple years, when Ravikumar determined maintaining her full-time job with the state and two business locations was too much to handle. She closed her Topeka location and expanded services at the Cosmos in Lawrence.
“The Topeka store was a grocery and personal items (store),” she says. “When we moved to Lawrence, we found there was a need for an Indian restaurant specializing in south-Indian cuisine. Customers were asking for it.”
Cosmos Indian Store became Cosmos Indian Store & Café.
“We started the restaurant in 2013,” Ravikumar says, “and now it’s more popular than the groceries.”
About a year after opening the restaurant, Ravikumar relocated Cosmos once again, this time to its current location at 3115 W. Sixth St.
Items at Cosmos Indian Store
A Store for Everyone and Everything
Ravikumar likes to think of Cosmos Indian Store & Café as a “five-in-one store.” It’s an Indian grocery, restaurant, health and beauty store, and tobacco shop, and sells a variety of henna cones and products for Henna art—temporary body tattoos. Cosmos also offers Henna art services, which is a very big attraction, she says.
The small store space, tucked in the middle of a strip mall just off of West Sixth, is crammed full of grocery items that include basmati rice, spice marsala, lentils, whole grains, teas and coffees, and, of course, plenty of spices. Health and beauty items include incense, essential oils, hair oils, soaps and Himalayan supplements. There are religious and historic statues and jewelry. Also, a variety of women’s clothing, including traditional Indian saris, limited men’s Kurta and full Indian suits.
It’s nearly everything anyone from India, or any other numerous Asian and African countries, could want.
“We try to reflect our culture here at Cosmos,” Ravikumar says.
In fact, she says she named her business Cosmos because the name is universal and includes all peoples, not just those from India.
“I’d say about 50 percent of our customers are Indian,” she says. “But we get a lot of American, Mediterranean, Philippines, Indonesians … Africans love our health and beauty items.”
Ravikumar takes equal pride in her workforce. She loves the fact it’s all women. And like her clientele, it’s a veritable United Nations. Her five employees hail from India, Kuwait, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the U.S.
“Of course, I’m proud of that,” she says. “When I first opened back in 2000, I had no idea about how to open an Indian store. Everything I learned on the fly. The first couple years were a struggle. I think it helped that the purpose of this was never just to make money. Of course, I didn’t want to lose money.
“Now, we’re doing very well. The restaurant is doing well, and we do very well with online shipping, as well. We ship 20 to 30 packages a day to West India, the (United Kingdom), Ireland, all over.”
Items at Cosmos Indian Store
Passion and Spice
Like her background in business, Ravikumar says she also had no formal training in cooking. But she didn’t need any. She learned everything she needed to know about Indian cuisine from her mother back home in Chennai.
When asked what makes a dish uniquely Indian, Ravikumar simply smiles and says, “Curry.”
Curry is the traditional Indian spice blend that adds a certain kick to native recipes. You can most likely find it in the Chicken Tikka Masala or Vegetable Korma that are featured servings. The menu also includes rice specialties, Indian breads, soups, dosas (crisp pastry crepes stuffed and made for dipping into chutney), samosa chaat (fried samosas tossed with vegetables and spices) and biryani, a rice dish. Beverages include Indian coffees and chai teas.
The café features a small space for dine-in restaurant customers, but most of Cosmos’s food-service business comes through deliveries and carryouts. Ravikumar says she uses six online channels for deliveries: Grubhub, EatStreet, Uber Eats, DoorDash, Starve Bird and Jayhawk2Go. Cosmos also offers party orders, catering and gift certificates.
Cosmos Indian Store & Café, which offers a 5% discount to KU students, is open seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 8 p.m. Sunday. Prior to July 1 of this year, Ravikumar closed the store on Mondays. But one employee who cleaned that day kept having customers drop in wondering why they couldn’t feed their Indian jones.
Ravikumar had no problem opening that extra day despite working a full-time job with the state and spending most of the rest of her time with her business.
“I’ve never considered this as work,” she says. “It’s my passion. I enjoy doing this, and we’re doing very well. I usually take some time off each year and go visit my mom in India. I have two daughters, one who is studying engineering and the other who has completed a degree in finance. They and my mom helped me for a long time.”
If all continues going well, Ravikumar says she plans to take over the space next door to Cosmos and open a tobacco and CBD store in October. Business is that good.
“Now the business is very stable,” she says. “People followed us here when we moved. We have a good reputation and are well-known. Everything looking ahead to the future looks good.” p