Kathmandu, Sept. 6 -- By six every morning, Kinchu Lhamo Bhutia is out of her house to buy chicken and buffalo meat. Buying the meat herself is one of her quality control measures for her business Kinchu's Kitchen, which sells frozen momos, and buff and chicken pickles.

For a long time, Kinchu's Kitchen was just an idea in Bhutia's head. Bhutia, a native of Sikkim, moved to Kathmandu after getting married. She had always wanted to start a business focusing on serving the kind of Sikkimese food that she grew up eating. But between helping her husband's pashmina business in Kathmandu and raising her children, she had very little time to do anything else.

As the nation went into a lockdown in March, the family's pashmina shop in Thamel had...