Launch HN: The Buttermilk Company (YC S18) – Homemade Indian Food in 5 Minutes | Hacker News Reader

Launch HN: The Buttermilk Company (YC S18) – Homemade Indian Food in 5 Minutes

377 pointsmitraraman441 comments

Hey HN,

I’m Mitra Raman, the founder/CEO of The Buttermilk Company (https:///www.thebuttermilkco.com). We help you make authentic, fresh Indian food in 5 minutes by just adding water to our products.

As an Indian-American in my 20s, I grew up eating my mom’s homemade Indian food everyday. When I moved away from home to attend Carnegie Mellon University, I was homesick for the first time and realized how hard it was to find anything that resembled my mom’s food. I either had to make it myself (finding the Indian grocery store + following my mom’s recipe took way too much time) or would settle for whatever generic dishes at the local Indian restaurant. The options were expensive, time-consuming, or tasted horrible.

Two years into my job as an Software Engineer at Amazon, I asked my mom to help me make her rasam. She gave me all the ingredients in a ziploc bag and told me to just add hot water! I asked my friends about how they coped with homesickness and realized that most parents were also figuring out their own ways of getting their kids’ favorites foods to them when they moved. That’s how the idea for Buttermilk started!

We crowdsource our recipes from real people (keeping our product truly authentic) and develop them into products that are super easy for our customers to make. If you’ve ever asked your mom to send a family recipe to you, you know how hard it is to get this right! Our team spends hours in the kitchen tweaking each recipe so we can prep and cook it just enough that the customer can complete the cooking with water. We have to be careful to not over-prep such that the taste and nutritional value erode over time.

We use fresh and non-GMO ingredients, make everything from scratch (seriously, even the garam masala), and deliver our perishable products in sustainable packaging. Our production is extremely detail-oriented and time-consuming because we are recreating recipes for one family into large-scale batches that need to maintain the quality of its original recipe. To improve efficiency, we have built software to track food production, predict incoming volume, and help our production and fulfillment teams communicate. We’re also exploring new shelf-life extension technologies (such as HPP) so our products can last a lot longer. Currently, they must be refrigerated for 5-7 days or frozen for up to 3 months -- if you don’t eat them before then, that is!

In terms of market size: there are over 4 million Indian immigrants in the U.S. This demographic, like all other ethnic groups, is poorly served by the existing food options when it comes to their cuisines. And of course there is the population of everyone who just likes Indian food and can’t find or make it! Though we are starting with Indian cuisine, we definitely don't plan to stop there. The market for ethnic foods in the U.S. is at least $5B. But in good startup style, we've started with the specific problem we ourselves had.

We’re super eager to hear your feedback, ideas, and experiences in this space or as it relates to our type of product.

View on HN

How is this any different from MTR's line of products?[1]

And given that MTR's products cost just $2.50 per pack where I currently live, $24 isn't exactly cheap. I haven't tasted your product, but I have tasted the MTR ones and they seem pretty authentic. And MTR being a very old, traditional brand, it's as authentic as it gets. Would love to hear about your differentiation strategy.

[1] https://www.mtrfoods.com/products/ready-to-eat

Glad you asked! We have a few key differences:

- MTR provides just the spices, you have to bring everything else. This includes vegetables/meat, seasoning, additional spices, oil/salt, etc. Our products include all of this so that the only ingredient you add is water which makes it much more convenient.

- Our packets are 100% fresh and don't have any preservatives, whereas existing packaged Indian foods are packed with them. This makes our products tastier, fresher and much healthier, although it comes with a shorter shelf-life.

- Our recipes are curated from people in the community (for example, the rasam is my mom's!) This lends a very homemade taste to each dish.

- We deliver to you! All existing pre-packaged authentic Indian foods are only available in Indian stores, so we're making good Indian food available to a much larger audience.

- At the end of the day, the taste just isn't comparable. Microwaveable chana masala from Haldiram's, let's say, comes out looking/smelling/tasting not at all like a homemade dish. Ours is made completely from scratch and you as a customer can feel that difference.

MTR/Haldiram's are 'last-resort' type meals, and we aim to be a meal that you actually crave + is good for you :)

> MTR provides just the spices, you have to bring everything else. This includes vegetables/meat, seasoning, additional spices, oil/salt, etc. Our products include all of this so that the only ingredient you add is water which makes it much more convenient.

Sorry, this is not accurate. If I buy an MTR Sambhar rice, or Paneer masala, everything is included. I just need to heat it and eat it.

> Our packets are 100% fresh and don't have any preservatives, whereas existing packaged Indian foods are packed with them. This makes our products tastier, fresher and much healthier, although it comes with a shorter shelf-life.

I can't vouch for the freshness of MTR's products, but I know they don't use preservatives (as it's printed on their cartons). They use a combination of food engineering and package engineering to preserve the food without using preservatives. That's why when you buy their ready to eat products, you will find a lot of oil in them (which you're supposed to drain away) as it helps to preserve the food for months, if not years. This is no different than storing dead specimens such as rats in biological laboratories, I assume.

> Our recipes are curated from people in the community (for example, the rasam is my mom's!) This lends a very homemade taste to each dish.

Ok, this sounds good.

> We deliver to you! All existing pre-packaged authentic Indian foods are only available in Indian stores, so we're making good Indian food available to a much larger audience.

So, basically a uber type of service? So that almost makes you guys like any other restaurant, no? I mean, what's the difference between calling an Indian restaurant to have fresh food delivered vs calling you guys?

> At the end of the day, the taste just isn't comparable. Microwaveable chana masala from Haldiram's, let's say, comes out looking/smelling/tasting not at all like a homemade dish. Ours is made completely from scratch and you as a customer can feel that difference.

This is subjective. Like I said, if you call up a decent Indian restaurant (HSB / Anjappar / Raj / etc.), you can get a similar experience.

> MTR/Haldiram's are 'last-resort' type meals, and we aim to be a meal that you actually crave + is good for you :)

Sorry, but I am still not convinced why your product is worth $24 and based on what you answer, seems like there isn't much difference between ordering from a decent Indian restaurant and you guys?

I appreciate taking the time to explain your points so far.

> seems like there isn't much difference between ordering from a decent Indian restaurant and you guys

I know it seems absurd on HN, but there are people who live in areas without decent Indian restaurants.

That's fine, but then the question becomes "How many people who want fancy 'high quality' Indian food also live far from decent Indian food". At this price point, your demographic seems to be people who have a decent amount of disposable income who also want QUALITY Indian food who also don't want to have to prepare it themselves and who don't live near Indian restaurants of comparable quality to the product. How much of that 5 Billion dollar pie have you carved away from your product when it's framed like that?

I have to agree with OP. I wish you well, but if I want to pay this much money for Indian food I'll likely go to an Indian Restaurant near me. I'm supporting a local business and being provided with a restaurant experience.

(of note: I worked in restaurants for over a decade, so my food spending tends to fall into "dining experience at a great restaurant" or "ingredients to prepare my own food because it's cheaper than convenience foods". I was going to be a hard sell from the start).

Appreciate the responses!

- The microwaveable complete meals are definitely more similar to our products, but those are once again shelf-stable and lack in taste and nutrition. We will be doing a live comparison of our Chana Masala vs. the MTR Chana Masala to show how different it is in amount of product, look, smell, taste and nutrition.

- The oil that they include is definitely a type of preservative, and they use packaging engineering called retort packaging. This is very similar to vacuum sealing where you are drying up the product to remove the nutritional value. I think we could agree that there's a pretty big difference between MTR paneer masala and a homemade paneer masala. I would say that our products are similar if not the same as if you made it from scratch.

- We are e-commerce delivery, not on-demand. The difference between ordering from us vs. an Indian restaurant would be price-point (most dishes start at $7-10).

- Taste is definitely subjective!

>They use a combination of food engineering and package engineering to preserve the food without using preservatives.

I don't know specifically about Haldiram's or MTR (I might have tried out MTR Indian food ready-to-eat packs), but some others that I used to buy and eat sometimes (I forget the name, it may have been from an ITC group company - the Indian food and tobacco giant), mention on the package that they use DRDO-licensed technology. DRDO is an Indian defence-oriented R&D organization of the Indian government. The technology was originally developed for soldiers on the field. So likely made in such a way as to last long, and could account for its not tasting that good, and not as good as the same item, but freshly made (obviously).

>This makes our products tastier, fresher and much healthier

Any evidence that your food is healthier? Or even any explanation as to why it would be.

>Our recipes are curated from people in the community

What community? Every recipie comes from someone in a community.

>All existing pre-packaged authentic Indian foods are only available in Indian stores

Not where I live. Walmart even sells pre-packaged desi style food.

>Ours is made completely from scratch

What does that even mean in the context of selling a pre-made food product.

Not sure how OP's product is different, but MTR's food is not good at all. Even assuming that a $2.50 pack is enough for you (I find that I need two at most times for my regular hunger), it's not good to eat at all. I usually reserve it for national park trips only (the convenience of popping the pack into boiling water or into the microwave for 2 mins is unbeatable).

As far as authenticity goes, most of their stuff isn't. I would actually put them in the "very very bad attempt" category. But it could just represent the food of local area where they started (and that's not really acceptable, given that they make a wide range of stuff).

Totally agree. I consider the MTR Palak Paneer in the category of "Indian Chef Boyardee". I don't know how successful she'll be but OP clearly appears to be highlighting taste and freshness.

"national park trips only "

I do that too! MTR and the Trader Joe's Indian dishes are my camping food. Definitely no comparison to fresh food.

It wasn't clear from the home page that $24 is for "one meal that serves 3-4 people".

If it doesn't greatly increase the price of packaging for your product, you may want to experiment with showing pictures of (and sending) food in single-serving packages (so instead of sending five-six packets, you'd send 15-24 of them).

Another option is to go with a "Home Chef" style pitch -- basically saying "here's a dinner date night for two in a box".

That's a good point! Our products are created as a single serving per packet, so when you purchase our pre-made packs we specify how many meals you can make out of that pack to help users out.

Haven't tried any food from buttermilk, but if their shelf life is any indication their food is much fresher than MTRs. MTR's packets are good for at least a year (and taste like it - they are passable in a pinch but definitely have that preservative taste to them). I think buttermilk is competing with freshly made or restaurant quality food.

Edit: was wrong about MTR using preservatives, but I've always found their food to have an off taste.

MTR doesn't use preservatives, the whole food is just sealed air-tight with extra oil covering the food to prevent it from rotting. It's a combination of package engineering and food engineering.

They say no preservatives:

https://www.mtrfoods.com/mtr_admin/data_content/products_gal...

Yes, you're right! We are a fresher and healthier option than frozen meals, with a more authentic and varied selection.

MTR is definitely decent, but it’s a far cry from authentic, quality Indian food. I’ve had many MTR lunches at work, but I don’t see myself eating it for dinner where convenience is not my primary concern.

It seems like Buttermilk is definitely competing for quality, not price.

They also sell Amy's Bowls at every whole foods in the country:

https://www.amys.com/our-foods/indian-mattar-paneer

https://www.amys.com/our-foods/indian-palak-paneer

Amy's bowls typically come in around $5 per dish as well.

Maybe i'm just picky but MTR or even (Gits) is horrible. Deep is the only one that is somewhat decent.

Their competition is not just MTR, but also Deep, Haldiram, etc that sells frozen entrees for ~ $3 at any Indian grocery.

MTR definitely has a different taste than what you get when you use fresh spices. No idea how the OP's products taste.

The difference is that the MTR stuff actually tastes horrible and nothing like actual, regular, everyday Indian food.

MTR is shit. I haven't tried buttermilk but if they are as good as they claim then I am definitely going to be one of their target customers.

I think you should consider your addressable market to be greater than Indian expats - I'm a Brit and I miss my curry living here as much as anyone from India!

Two quick thoughts:

1) I don't get your branding, especially the company name, and especially as all of your meals are vegan.

2) Shipping meat-based meals is presumably a very different and more expensive logistical challenge so I get the reason why there's no meat in these but it seems as though these packets could easily be combined with pan-cooked chicken to make a more substantial meal - is that the case and is that something you've considered promoting as part of the marketing?

I wish you the very best of luck!

> 1) I don't get your branding, especially the company name, and especially as all of your meals are vegan.

As I mentioned downthread, I was planning to skip this completely because of the name until one of the founders happened to mention in a comment that the meals are vegan. I don't normally associate "buttermilk" with anything that I eat as a vegan.

This might be a tricky marketing issue, because a huge amount of traditional home-cooked Indian food is lacto-vegetarian but not vegan. So there might be not an enormous customer segment that would view the lack of dairy in these meals as an advantage (although I'm in that customer segment myself).

That's a great point about the branding. Why we're called Buttermilk: Buttermilk is eaten at the end of almost every South Indian meal to "cool down" the stomach. As a South Indian myself, this is one of my go-to comfort foods. The aim with the company is to provide authentic, comfort foods which is how we came about to using it for the name! Plus, it's a known and easy-to-say word.

We didn't actually launch with the aim of only providing vegan meals, it just so happened that our first dishes are all vegan! This has definitely caused some confusion so we'll continue to iterate on our branding/messaging.

I may as well chime in here to provide another data point. I'm also vegan and I was definitely turned off by the name. I wouldn't have read further if it wasn't clearly a service for Indian food, which I am particularly interested in. I'm glad that your first line of meals is vegan, and as another South Indian I can sympathize with the reasoning behind the name, but I'm sure many others would be confused by the name as well.

Another vegan chiming in to say I assumed these weren’t suitable for me based on the name because buttermilk is an ingredient I see and think, “damn :(“. Veganism is very much about identifying red flags that make something unsuitable, so any reference to a non-vegan product is going to immediately turn off a non-zero portion of vegans because they won’t search out the ingredients to discover it is vegan.

A key part of a manageable vegan life is building a database of what you can consume that you enjoy and using that to drive choices, so if you can get vegan customers buying your food and enjoying it then they’re going to be stickier customers. I am a very loyal customer to my favourite food brands out of necessity, as are my vegan friends.

That said there’s certainly a double edged sword here in that there are some non-vegans who see “vegan” and are turned off but given Indian food is so often vegan I don’t think this would be a concern in your market. Although the name is cute, it’s definitely misrepresenting your product to a growing portion of your potential customers. If you stick with the name, regardless of marketing, you’re going to lose vegans, because many won’t look beyond the name because that’s a necessity for getting by.

There’s a few companies in the U.K. doing intentionally vegan ready meals (e.g https://allplants.com) and there’s a growing market for vegan ready meals (we are as busy/lazy as everybody else), so I think it’s worthwhile to reconsider the name, but also it’s a great name so maybe you can be the company to get vegans to look beyond red flags. Your product seems absolutely great for my needs and would, assuming they’re enjoyable to eat, integrate into my life well. Good luck!

> Veganism is very much about identifying red flags that make something unsuitable,

Yeah, I've become very quick at glancing at an ingredient list and noticing "whey" or "gelatin" and then putting the product back. So indeed, the brand name itself would trigger a similar reaction for me if the founder hadn't happened to specifically mention that it was vegan.

> That said there’s certainly a double edged sword here in that there are some non-vegans who see “vegan” and are turned off but given Indian food is so often vegan I don’t think this would be a concern in your market.

There might be some knowledgeable customers who expect a particular dish to contain ghee and feel like it's not likely to be that great without the ghee.

Hi Mitra,

Great initiative. But even I don't understand the use of this name as Branding. As ideally "Buttermilk" is a Drink consumed throughout India, and ironically your company is not selling it. :-).

Also its a name of the Drink and you are selling ready to eat food items which also make this name a little inappropriate, as for any Indian it gives the impression of Drink selling site rather than Food selling site. (Even i was not planning to look at it, if I have not read the comments).

Anyways all the best and have a great success.

I saw Mitra's reply downthread, but adding my 2c as an Indian:

Buttermilk is commonly drunk with meals in India (both North and South, although lassi is very popular in the North too), and also separately as a refresher, more so in summer, often lightly spiced with cumin, hing (asafoetida), etc. and sometimes with a few green chillies in it (for the brave - heh:), and is considered a soothing drink, and also healthy and wholesome. In fact I remember a childhood friend of mine saying that (as we both drank a glass each of buttermilk at lunch at his house), and it stuck in my memory. And it is really that - soothing.

I wasn’t aware hing and lightly spiced could be used in the same sentence.

Ha ha, good point :) Yes, hing is a very strong spice. But it can be a light spice, if you use little enough. Normally just a tiny pinch of it is used. Also, in India, the packaged variety you get from shops is usually mixed with some filler material which makes it less strong. Not sure what, need to check. In a similar manner, for example, some mustard powder out here is mixed with some whole wheat flour (atta) and turmeric, for the same reason. E.g. Weifield's Mustard Powder, a common brand.

Yes my impression is it’s atta

Is the buttermilk made from the leftovers of churning butter or is it milk that they grow cultures in?

Interesting question. Answer: The former. However, there is another product loosely called buttermilk by some, here. It is just curd (Indian term for yoghurt) diluted with water and maybe stirred or whisked a bit to mix up the water well with the curd. If you can't get the former, you can easily make this with curd you have at home. The real buttermilk is usually salted slightly. The one made from curd can be had either salty or sweet by adding sugar.

>I think you should consider your addressable market to be greater than Indian expats - I'm a Brit

I don't know. I'm not Indian either, and I was drawn to it in part because it wasn't advertised to westerners.

The hipster foodie market is best catered to by not catering to them.

Thank you for your feedback! Note about why we're called Buttermilk below.

Re: meat-based options, we have added suggestions for meat to mix in with each dish under 'How to eat'! We plan on adding more in-depth recipes in the near future.

This seems like you are working off of TastyBite's playbook:

http://tastybite.com/products/

> The options were expensive, time-consuming, or tasted horrible.

Tasty bite tastes decent, takes 60-90 seconds to heat up, and costs about $3/package with no need for refrigeration.

---

This seems like a YC to clone TastyBite without any differentiation beyond the nebulous "quality food".

So....

Are you telling me your quality is so much better a household staple of my life is going to be replaced for twice the price?

----

https://www.amazon.com/Tasty-Bite-Chickpeas-Tomatoes-Microwa...

$15 for 6 packages / 60 oz.

https://thebuttermilkco.com/collections/singles/products/cha...

$13.50 for 3 packages / 30 oz(?)

TastyBite is definitely a similar product/company. The key differentiators are:

- Our products are fresh and don't have any preservatives, meaning they must be refrigerated or frozen whereas TastyBite is shelf-stable for 9+ months. Our food is inherently fresher and tastes more homemade because of this.

- Our recipes are crowdsourced instead of developed in our kitchen. This ensures that the food is actually authentic with a homemade taste and we are able to expand into a much larger variety of products much quicker. For instance, we have a few recipes in our pipeline that you would be hard-pressed to find in TastyBite or even regular Indian restaurants because they are authentic to smaller regions of India.

- I can't say that you'll definitely like our product's taste better than TastyBite, but I do believe so :)

From the amazon link to TastyBite's packaging, it looks like they also don't use preservatives (It's explicitly mentioned in the packaging that no preservatives are used). Good luck with your startup, but their shelf life of 9+ months doesn't seem to be due to use of preservatives, it could be due to the packaging process.

On a relative note, there are tons of such products in India and most of them taste sub par to home cooked food. One exception I found was Butter Chicken I used to buy regularly when I was spent some time in Newyork few years ago. You just have to freeze it until you open and then, heat it in microwave and ready to go. It tasted very good, but spoiled my stomach (I am bearing the burden even till today) due to the usage of preservatives. Anything that doesn't use preservative is a welcome addition.

One more, when you mentioned sustainable packaging, what does it mean? Is it paper or bio plastic? If so another +1.

https://www.amazon.com/Tasty-Bite-Chickpeas-Tomatoes-Microwa...

So you are going to market as an upscale version of TastyBite with no preservatives that sells niche Indian food?

I wish you the best of luck with that.

Personally, I find a package of Vindaloo from TastyBite, some riced veggies, and a shredded chicken breast lasts me about 2 meals and is comparable to the price you are charging. I really only use TastyBite as a backpacking/on-the-go meal or as a quick curry out of laziness. I'm probably not your target market but shelf stability has alot going for it.

Your use case for TastyBit makes total sense. We're hoping to be a go-to option for a normal meal at home when you don't want to spend the time/money/energy on making a meal from scratch.

We are starting with Indian food but will hopefully be expanding to different cuisines, too!

>"Our products are fresh and don't have any preservatives,"

But Salt is probably the most common food preservative there is and the reason canned foods have such high levels of it.

Why is the salt content on many of these items through the roof for ready-made meals meant to be eaten soon after delivery.

> don't have any preservatives

Just what I was looking for. Definitely going to use this service.

Except Tasty Bite tastes terrible. There's another competitor making the same thing (sealed cooked food, no water needed) Maya Kaimal that is _much_ better. It actually tastes good.

Personally, I enjoy Tasty Bite curries. It may not be the perfect authentic Indian dish you get at a good restaurant but I find at its price point there isn't any real competitor for my $$.

Most Indian restaurants in the US aren't authentic, and cater to Western tastes. So

It's definitely a subjective thing! It's hard to find authentic Indian food that tastes good, is easy to make, and affordable. That's where we come in :)

It looks to me like the biggest difference is that these are not sealed, they're perishable. Tasty bite can be kept at room temperature for 9+ months.

Costco in the Seattle area also now sells some tasty bite bulk packs.

> It looks to me like the biggest difference is that these are not sealed, they're perishable. Tasty bite can be kept at room temperature for 9+ months.

Yeah, which isn't really a positive unless it saves on sodium/etc. If it does, its really a niche "healthy" version of TastyBite and they need to market it as such.

It doesn't seem to have any less sodium.

tasty bites are super cheap at costco, 12 pack for like $16

I think they're even cheaper this month. Picked up a box the other day.

I haven’t tried the food, but it seems like you are making real, high quality food. I think the “ship fresh” angle is interesting and worth experimenting with. I wish you the best and will follow the journey on Instagram!

Others in this thread seem dubious that quality could be a differentiator, but I think you should double down on that. It’s not just ingredients, but technique that makes food delicious and if you can truly scale proper par-cooking technique, that will be a strong core for your business, and difficult to copy from the outside.

I also think you are absolutely correct to focus on a core market who loves real Indian food. There’s no price you can put on your family’s home cooking, which makes it a good market for you to start in low volume.

Just a random idea as you grow: you might try supporting an “experiment community” the way Soylent did. I think that forum became https://www.completefoods.co. They encouraged people to share and develop their own recipes.

In the long term, you will need to compete against “monoculture” brands who are selling one size fits all products. Because you aren’t storing inventory, you will be positioned to sell a wider selection of products, even short runs of one-off special foods. Could be another differentiator.

Thank you! We agree that quality is a lot more than in the ingredients and makes a huge difference.

That's a great suggestion about the community. We are experimenting with community building through our recipe curators, who send in their recipes to be turned into Buttermilk products. They receive 5% of the proceeds of their product sales, too. There are tons of great opportunities for this!

Mitraraman,

The website has a really clean look - it makes the product seem delicious and authentic. The minimalist design compliments the minimalism of the product.

I would be careful with identifying your target market. I live in Chicago, which I believe has one of the highest percentages of Indian immigrant populations in the nation. This might seem like your target market - but in fact the large percentage of immigrants has led to a slew of Indian markets and restaurants, that are likely equally delicious and cheap. It is a common theme among my coworkers to bring in homecooked Indian meals on a daily basis.

I also noticed the Upma pack is listed as gluten-free, but contains semolina. That's just asking for legal trouble from those with Celiac's. It might be worth consolidating all of the different packages and their ingredients lists on a separate page, QAing them, and making them more available to the reader in an organized, possibly drop-down format. Hope this feedback is useful.

Cheers

Thank you, really happy you like our website and product! There's a few key differences between our products and the existing Indian-based products which I've called out in a different response.

That's a good point about the target market. There's definitely a sizable portion of immigrants who continue to cook from scratch. There's also an emerging part of the market who are first/second-generation and don't cook at home as often -- either because they don't know how, don't have all the ingredients on hand, or don't have the time/patience. We are aiming to serve this population, and also be a nice-to-have for the former group of people!

That is a great call out on the Upma and a mistake on our end (that we accidentally added last night!). We will fix this immediately. I also really like your feedback about putting all the ingredients and nutritional information on a single page. Thank you!

Mitra Raman, If you would please consider Celiacs... it's so hard to find suitable/delicious food. South Indian food can be quite friendly to Celiacs. That said, my wife is so sensitive we almost never eat out due to cross-contamination, we even avoid products that are "made in a facility that handles wheat". So, it's not just ingredients but the chances of cross-contamination that matter to us.

Speaking of which, I'd love to know of Indian restaurants in Chicago, ideally closer to south side, that are truly friendly to Celiacs. Thanks.

Well this might not answer your question in regards to the celiac aspect. I will say that the Indian place in the food court of 550 w Madison is worth checking out. It's adjacent to Ogilve. It's better than any other place I've tried by a long shot.

>It might be worth consolidating all of the different packages and their ingredients lists on a separate page

Agreed. And also may be worth putting all the nutritional information (I mean what ingredients are used, and all - not some - of them, and in what percentages or weights - again, for all), on the food packages themselves. Saying this because a pet peeve of mine about Indian products here is that many of them put such info for some, but not all of the ingredients. Common example: Haldiram snacks: they often mention many ingredients, but the labeling can go like this: Peanuts (8%), gram flour (12%), rice flour (no number given), and so on. I mean what the heck is the use of putting that info, then? if a person wants to know that info, they want to know it for all ingredients, not just some, for their health or whatever other reasons.

I don't think I'm exactly in your target market, but I have a related problem: We cook a lot of healthy foods at home (e.g. skinnytaste), and Indian recipes are the only ones that never come out.

I suspect it is because we never get the spices right. We went to an indian cooking class many years ago, and the woman who taught it hand ground all the spices herself. The results were amazing, but who has the time?

If you had a service that coupled premixed spices with recipes that use them, that would have been really exciting to me.

We can already buy various pre-made pastes/mixes at the grocery store, but they are really unhealthy.

If we could get the spices, then have control of all the fresh ingredients (meats, veggies) and also all the unhealthy ingredients (salt, anything with fat, etc), that would be attractive to me.

I know that is not what you are doing, but just for the future (a) spices are cheaper to mail and shelf-stable (b) the spice mix is probably the secret sauce of what makes it taste good, and it is difficult to duplicate in my experience (c) leaving the other ingredients out would allow home users to follow either a healthy recipe (fat free yogurt) or special occasion recipe (heavy cream!)

Anyway, FWIW, when I read the first lines of your description, that is what I was hoping for.

You just defined the concept of a masala. A masala is a mixture of dry spices in the correct ratio for a recipe. You can find them at an Indian store. I have also seen them at Target or on Amazon. The recipe for cooking is on the back side of a masala packet. Here is a link to a popular brand of masalas: http://www.everestspices.com/products

Thanks a lot! You are right, a masala was just what I was looking for. The Shan products mentioned below seem to have a ton of sodium, but the everest products you mention let you add your own sodium and sugar to taste. I just ordered some to try out.

There is no shortcut or workaround when it comes to fresh ingredients. That doesn’t mean you can’t market and sell one, just that it won’t deliver.

> the woman who taught it hand ground all the spices herself. The results were amazing, but who has the time?

I have an electric spice grinder, and it makes this process really quick - just drop in the spices and push a button! It grinds them to a powder within just a few seconds.

If you're interested in making your own spice blends, I highly recommend getting one.

Also, if there are blends that you particularly like, you can make a bigger batch and store them in an air-tight container, and they will retain the majority of their flavour for up to a few months.

Look for Shaan Masalas in an Indian store. They have the right spice mix, just follow the instructions on the box.

Congrats on the launch!

My wife's last job was at a factory that produced ice cream, and I was astounded to learn all the stuff that goes into quality control and keeping the food safe to eat. It's actually made me switch my cat food from those sort of 100% organic, high quality things to more mainstream brands, since I think what's being produced is less important than how it's produced, and I tend to trust larger factories by known quantities a little more.

Can you detail a little more your industrial process? The home page says "We make everything from scratch in our Seattle kitchen using only locally sourced ingredients + fresh vegetables" which sounds nice at first, but actually kind of creeps me out a little bit. I assume you have random FDA inspections and the like? Precautions to manage listeria, e. coli? A "locally sourced" supply chain with known quality controls, etc?

Also, is there a detailed ingredient list somewhere? My wife is allergic to chickpeas and lentils, which unfortunately makes eating Indian food very difficult for us, as much as I love it! I see lentils explicitly in some of the items, but others don't mention either, but that doesn't mean it's not used, e.g., in the flour or something.

Thanks for bringing this up -- food safety is super important! We work out of a licensed commercial kitchen with all the proper permits and licenses in place. All of our cooks have gone through extensive food safety training and we have quarterly FDA inspections (we just passed our last one with flying colors)! Our ingredients come from local distributors who are extremely trusted and vetted to provide the best quality ingredients. We also double inspect all of the ingredients to make sure they are up to our standards.

You can find a full ingredient list on each product's page under 'Benefits'.

Ordered, and excited to try! That free shipping offer got me to go back and add an item, so kudos. Once I taste the product, I might just submit a pav bhaji recipe.

Can't comment on pricing until I taste and get a sense of quantity. Certainly reasonable enough to let me try.

Some feedback on the site: - Love the pastel colors and packaging design. Very clean, with excellent photos. Any concern about appearing too feminine for your target customer? - I feel like the "Details" should already be open when I go to a product page. I ended up having to twirl it open each time I visited a page. Also annoying that the Drift pop-up covered up those details every time! - I got confused about bundles, quantities, and meal counts, and just ended up ordering enough to get free shipping. Maybe that's the intent? - Loved the "How to Eat" section. Helped me decide what to buy, but once again, it was hidden. - I would suggest left aligning your text on product descriptions. Centered text is harder to read, especially with the bulleted lists. - I want more imagery of the food! Photos of the ingredients! Videos of the cooking process! "How to Eat" as a video or photo series, instead of text!

As a non-Indian who enjoys Indian food, I'd be interested in this. However, if you want to market to non-Indians I'd suggest putting the dish description outside of the "Details" dropdown and up where the more general description is. Or start with the "Details" section expanded. Or rename "Details" to something else that lets you know that is where the more detailed description of the flavors is.

To add to this (as another non-Indian who enjoys Indian food), the descriptions are a little vague for me as to what's actually in the dish. I realize you probably wouldn't want to put every ingredient in the description but more of them would be good for someone like me.

Thank you for your feedback!

No problem. Feel free to reach out if you want to send me some samples for White-Guy Taste Testing. :)

Great idea. I wish you nothing but success.

Few points: * If you're targeting Indians. You need to price competitively. You need to make it hard to resist. * Find a village/s in India where you can procure and pack. * Post some videos of how it's prepared (tasty.com style).

Minor website issues: * Fix coloring "Buy it now" barely visible - https://thebuttermilkco.com/collections/single/products/daal * When user selects single. Images should show singles not multiple packs. * confusing product categorization. click on "shop now" on the landing page. goes to https://thebuttermilkco.com/collections/all I could not find "Singles" mentioned the listing. * on the shop menu it displays "Suites, combos, bundles" confusing just keep it simple "combos" and "singles" allow user to mix and match using cart? based on there selection apply pricing changes and let them feel they won a lottery by choosing the right combination.

All the best.

Thank you so much for the feedback!

Mitra congrats!

I'm dismayed by the folks harping on the sodium content (for health reasons not taste). I think it warrants a deeper look because sodium intake is controversial. But there's lot of evidence that people can have more than 2.3g and still be healthy if you have normal kidney function, etc. Shrug, maybe they just wanted to find something to hate on.

New England Journal of Medicine: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1311889

Summary: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-t...

Thank you!

If you plan on targeting the college market, I would focus the pitch on parents rather than students.

For a student, the alternative is to go to McDonald's and spend $8, or to go to an on-campus cafeteria.

For a parent, the alternative is to take a whole day (or more) to visit their child and bring a home-cooked meal in the trunk of their car (or on the train/plane/etc). At that price point, $24 is a steal. And the price of a "proper" dinner kit is probably on par with gift baskets the universities sell full of junk food/cake/candy/flowers/fruit salad.

That's a great suggestion -- you might be reading our minds here at Buttermilk HQ ;) Follow us for updates on this!

Reactions from a non-Indian (who loves Indian food):

* I really had to dig to find descriptions of the dishes.

* The emphasis on pre-built combo packs turned me off somewhat. You've only got ~10 dishes, I'd rather explicitly pick the 3 or 4 dishes that intrigued me than sift through all the combo packs to find the one that most closely matches what I want.

Thank you for your feedback!

- We changed our product page design recently to move descriptions to a different part of the page and will definitely look into redesigning it! - We find that pre-built packs are helpful for people who can't choose or want to try a bunch of different ones. You can also purchase the individual products here: https://thebuttermilkco.com/collections/singles

Your gluten free tags on many of the products seem to be wrong, Asefotida contains gluten, and it's an ingredient in your sambar, rasam, dal recipes, which are marked as gluten free. Incorrect health facts labeling causes distrust.

Thank you for pointing that out! We will review and update accordingly.

> Incorrect health facts labeling causes distrust.

And fraud (and potentially worse, e.g., wrongful death) lawsuits.

Very interesting. I recently invested into a US based food startup that does interesting stuff and I learned a lot about how hard it can be to get the recipes right and how hard it can be to produce such a product in quantity with high confidence in quality and packaging.

Much good luck with your company, if I could make two suggestions: add a subscription option (or make it the default), and maybe do not appeal to the 'homesick' part as much as you do now, there are a lot more people out there that enjoy Indian food than there are Indians abroad.

Also, it appears you do not sell outside of the United States, maybe make that more clear up-front?

Congratulations on the launch - I love this idea. One thing that stands out to me is your beautiful packaging. Could you shed some light into how you went about figuring out packaging and all the logistics involved?

IDK if you guys have a food stylist on staff, but your pictures could use improvements. I get that you're coming from tech, where sleek and minimalist is what people go for in design, but that's not how food photography works.

You dishes typically have 1 direct overhead picture of a bowl of the food. you then have several styled pictures of the "combos" or of the food in a sealed package. People eat with their eyes first. You're trying to sell comfort and yet you present your food in a very minimalist/sterile way.

Compare your images, to someone in a similar space, hello fresh: https://www.hellofresh.com/menus/?redirectedFromAccountArea=...

Food styling is aspirational. It's about getting the consumer to look at an image and say "I want that". It needs to speak to those desires.

A zip-top, solid colored plastic bag does not make me want to eat what is inside the bag.

Appreciate the feedback! It's on our to-do list :)

I have to say I’m impressed at the price at which you’re able to deliver these meals - I would have expected them to cost 25-50% more a la Blue Apron (which I don’t use due to the price). I’ll have to try these!

Have you thought about trying to sell your products, or similar products, to people who camp/hike/etc? I think the fact that the meals are dehydrated and easy to cook would appeal to them

One point of constructive criticism I would offer is that I find the nutritional information hard to find and read in some circumstances.

Thank you! Definitely -- we are a Seattle-based company so we have a huge community of campers and hikers eating our meals! Our products are not actually dehydrated, so they are great for 1-day hiking and camping excursions but not for much longer unless you're able to keep them cool.

That is a great point, and we will definitely update our website to make the nutritional information more readable.

Mentioning on the packaging and/or site, how you make the product dry (after assembling and cooking it), may be of interest to readers (unless you cannot because it is some proprietary technique). I know I would be. Just a thought.

We don't actually dry or dehydrate our products in any way, but can definitely include more information on how we create and package our products.

+ Good name

+ Good package design especially color palette

+ Good website

- Expensive for packaged food

- Nothing that stood out (from comments) as strong differentiator from competitors (that they can not do)

- Unclear target market, this is what I gathered from comments, people

    * Who don't have access to Indian restaurants

    * Who don't have time or know how to cook Indian food at home

    * Who don't have access to competitors products 

       ** Hard to make case here as all major retailers sell one or other Indian food packages, and for everyone else there is Amazon Prime

    * Who have access to restaurants, have time or know how to cook but would instead prefer to spend about same amount of money on packaged food as they would by ordering it with food delivery services.

I might be completely wrong but IMO this is commodity business, unless you are building robots which can cook millions of packages of custom made Indian food for everyone.

Best of luck! I remember the good 'ol CMU days when we'd hit up "IG" (aka India Garden on Atwood - now closed) or "Taste" (aka Taste of India)... Certainly a far cry - I can imagine - from a good home-cooked meal.

My suggestion: was looking for a video on your site... Something like that on the very first page might help people understand better what is being offered and how easy it is to prepare.

Thank you!! I "fondly" remember IG as well :)

That is a good suggestion -- we've actually been talking about that internally recently and will revisit it.

I also have fond memories of India Garden with their half-price menu after 11pm. Sad to hear they closed.

Hey!

I'm am an expat who lives in the UK. I'm from India as well. $24 for 3-4 vegetarian meals seems really expensive, will you adjust pricing as you scale?

How do you plan on preserving taste and the "home cooked feeling" as you scale? This might be an absurd question at this stage, but a friend and I who wanted to get in this space couldn't come up with a good answer.

Personally, I just cook a lot of food whenever I cook so that I am able to do a couple of meals. I've recently considered having a soylent for dinner and I just ordered my first pack of Huel. I can cook whenever I want to eat really authentic food.

Here in the UK a lot of house wives provide a tiffin service. Is there something similar in the US?

Great website. Nice story. I wish you luck :)

Hey! Thanks for the message. Our products are all priced at $4.50-6, which is quite reasonable for a full meal that includes vegetables, protein, spices, etc.

We're working on a few things that will help us automate a lot of the repeated processes but still ensure the same homemade recipes are being followed correctly. It's definitely a hard problem but one we're working hard to solve!

I believe there are similar services in some larger cities, but those usually have higher prices ($10-14 per meal) and aren't able to scale with the demand as necessary.

We hope to be the go-to for authentic food when the existing options don't cut it and you don't have the time or energy to make it yourself!

I saw one of the meal packs that was around 23.50 and said 3-4 meals, so I calculated it to be around $8/meal.

I agree that cooking can get quite exhausting, procuring ingredients, cooking and then cleaning up is a long process.

You are solving a real problem. Good luck!

What is this 'tiffin service'? I'm from the UK and have never heard of it.

A "Tiffin" in India is a meal in a box. There is this website https://tiffinplanet.co.uk/ that provides a tiffin service. That is serves Indian food to you for lunch/dinner. You can find similar services on Gumtree. I briefly subscribed to a Tiffin service that would advertise the food a day before and you could decide whether you were interested or not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiffin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala

(I don't know anything about the U.K. situation.)

Can you please offer a fructose-free option? Or at least tell your customers which products contain added fructose?

This matters because there is an ever-growing mountain of evidence that shows that fructose is the primary cause of the obesity epidemic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Do you mean to say sugar-free option? Or high fructose corn syrup? Tangentially, I would argue that fructose isn't the primary cause of obesity but the excess of sugar (fructose, glucose, sucrose) consumption.

No, I mean specifically fructose, no matter what the source (sugar, honey, agave, HFCS, natural fruit that has been turned into pulp or frozen, etc.)

Regarding your tangential point, watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM. I used to be quite the Atkins dieter, and I didn't gain any weight when I started eating _some_ non-fructose carbs. Thanks to the fact that weight tends to correlate with age, I look a lot younger than most people think I am. (I've been doing this for nine years...)

Good luck to you. I absolutely abhor MTR and other Indian meals out there. They taste yuck and are unappetizing. Hopefully your company will change that. I like how you named it after lassi but buttermilk is not really lassi. I absolutely have no hesitation in saying that you will be successful, if your rasam tastes as good as you say it is. Hopefully you start doing saag soon. One of the old world Punjabi foods, before Portuguese came with their fancy la-de-da tomatoes. It is just mustard stalks, ginger, salt and chilli for the most part. So sits right there with your company's vision. If you are looking for an Australian contact, I will be happy to hear from you.

> They taste yuck and are unappetizing.

Have you done a blind taste test?

I think the food is slightly overpriced but I would be willing to pay for high quality organic food. However, my key concern is how you deal with allergens. I am very sensitive to certain food items like gluten and dairy which makes it hard for me to find food when I travel. If you can handle food contamination and provide organic gluten/dairy free food, consider me a customer. I can totally see myself buying these for my trips.

BTW, when I say gluten and dairy free, I am talking about celiac friendly food. You need to ensure that gluten content is below 20 PPM.

I understand your concern, and we're very careful to not cross-contaminate. All of our products are vegan and the only dishes that are NOT gluten-free are khichdi, upma, and our rices. We use our own kitchen appliances and actually cook the gluten-free and non-gluten-free dishes on separate days to ensure that we're being careful. You're right, these are great for trips!

I'm also a celiac. I'm surprised there's nothing about gluten free products on the FAQ page.

I'm also sensitive. This kind of product would be excellent for me if I knew it wasn't poisoning me.

This is a big issue for celiacs. We get treated like trash (not as bad as a decade ago) and have been burned countless times with so called "gluten free" food. One example, there was a local chief telling people that he was a celiac and then cooked "gluten free" noodles in the water with gluten noodles. We later found out he didn't have celiac, it was only a marketing ploy.

We've learned just not to trust people unless they are serious and "get it", show genuine understanding of our concerns and the serious consequences of cross contamination.

Best of luck, I hope this prospers.

There are devices that allow you test gluten contamination in your food. If you can validate that your food is celiac safe, consider me a customer!

Right up my alley. Thanks for using Amazon/Paypal/Google checkout integration properly, and not just to pre-fill some info while making me create Yet Another Shopping Account.

One bug: the Amazon cart discarded my old items after I added new ones.

Steps to reproduce: 1. Add a sampler to the cart 2. Try to check out using Amazon 3. Discover that shipping is $6, or free shipping at $35+ 4. Go back and add a few more items 5. Try to check out with Amazon again

Expected result: The items all show up, now at the $35 level

Actual result: Only the newly added items were show

Thank you, happy to make the shopping experience easier for you!

Very sorry to hear about that issue and thank you for the debugging instructions. We will look into it immediately!

This sounds awesome. As a person who grew up eating boiled vegetables, roast beef, and chicken I've come to love Indian cooking with an undying passion. I could eat it all day, every day.

Fresh and convenient? Sold.

Thank you! Happy to hear it.

Curious, why's YC investing in this?

Is there some new technology element?

Or a tech switch happening making this possible?

I believe there's a lot more to serving this customer segment. Especially, in terms of engaging the. Often, times it is the details in the "home-made" dishes that differentiate from everything else. It is quite exciting to have the building blocks for having an amazing meal, but the scope of the twist should be customizable. If you could incorporate, a video series like https://www.youtube.com/user/BonAppetitDotCom while using your ingredients (by the way I can get Basmati rice, from any grocery store in US!) and other common ingredients - that would fundamentally improve the experience.

That's a really great suggestion, hopefully we can do that in the future!

I love this idea. It occurs to me that the category of non-shelf stable, just add water meals is really interesting. You are going to be able to produce something more high quality and authentic. And I'd guess that large companies who like to focus on shelf stable products to minimize inventory/supply chain costs will be averse to producing something like this. If I was in the US I'd buy it immediately.

I am in Thailand and this approach would be very interesting for a number of Thai foods as well. The king of ready-made or easy-prep meals here is 7-11. They even microwave, toast, add hot water, etc. in the store for you. This would be a direct upgrade to many of the Thai meals they offer.

I did my BS at CMU as well, though it's been around 3 years since I graduated. The Indian food options were not great in Pittsburgh; I remember one restaurant that got shut down by the Allegheny County Health Department. A service like this would have been perfect for me, easy to prepare in crowded shared kitchens or even in my dorm room.

The other options all have their downsides. The imported pre-packaged stuff has a lot of oil (and has an overwhelming amount of garlic) and honestly smells rancid. Frozen options like Amy's are alright, but quite bland. And restaurant delivery, even if available near you, is not very healthy.

It looks like this won't have any of those drawbacks. Excited to try it out.

Curious, do you offer GMO products for people that care about sustainability and the environment or is it too hard to serve both markets?

I've wished this were a thing before! I'm glad someone's doing it! Right now, the only alternative is like ramen or smth.

You should mention that it's vegan more prominently, might sway some people even faster.

Happy to hear! Thanks for the feedback :)

Mitra - Cool idea! I was always a bit envious of my Indian and Bangladeshi friends in college who came to campus on Monday with a Tupperware container full of food. Now I can try it out myself. Just ordered some.

FWIW, I really like the website and personally I do like that you sell it in pre-set packs. I don't know my way around non-Americanized Indian food very well and would be happy to try anything - happy to let you all pick what that is at first. It's nice that you let people buy multiples of 1 pack once they find something they really like.

Nutrition Label upfront, in words and text. I know there is a picture but I missed it, some of the nutrition labels are like the 4th picture.

Some of the starter packs don’t have nutrition label on it either.

Great feedback. We will update our website accordingly!

I really hope you do well. But most of your customers are going to be in US cities, basically the Bay Area, NYC, LA etc. And those places are over flowing with Indian restaurants. Like fresh food cheaper than what you are selling(You can buy a unlimited buffet for as little as $11). Combined with things like Door Dash and Uber eats, the delivery problem is solved too.

There are restaurants at all cost points.

Pre packed food is a huge turn off for most Indians, and Indian-Americans. I mean people who have immigrated, not their kids born in America. Plus Indians are cost conscious.

I see you are selling that curry pack- Rice + curry for $28. You could a month worth Indian food with that kind of money. Indians are very cost conscious people. The bag of Basmati rice(5 kg) costs $15, you also get Idly/Dosa batter, heat and eat chapathis for pretty less too. And even if you shopped lavishly, the grocery bill is a lot less than anything you can sell.

Plus you have to also fight the affiliation people have towards things like Maggi Noodles, MTR and MDH masalas.

The other part making your case worse is the huge supply of Indian shops in most economic centers. Everything is available, like everything- Including cooking equipment. Heck, I had more diverse Indian food in Sunnyvale than I have eaten in Bangalore.

Hi Raman

Firstly congratulations on launching the product.

Being myself from india, I love cooking and really like the choices what you have.

However I notice one main thing which may cause issue

"Made in a facility with meat, wheat and nuts"

As you know few majority of Indians prefer vegetarian food and they may be bit skeptical of eating if it was processed in facility with meat.

Also you did not mentioned what kind of meat ? As you know we have different religions and people have certain restrictions

Thank you for the support! Being a strict vegetarian myself I understand the concern. We operate out of a shared kitchen space, so other clients in the space make a variety of dishes which include meat, wheat, and nuts. We use our own kitchen utensils, dishes, pots/pans, etc to avoid contamination as much as possible. Maybe one day we can share a video of a "day in the life" of our kitchen staff to show you, but rest assured that we take it very seriously to not cross-contaminate :) Per FDA regulations, we must include that information on our packaging.

I think I’m your perfect “people that just like Indian food” target audience!

The only thing from just skimming the site (haven’t dove deep in just yet) is that it seems it’s only veggie dishes right? Not a deal breaker, but if you had at least easy to follow recipes accompanying these on how to add some meat to them, this might turn into 100% of my meals

Anyways, will be ordering when I get home. Good job launching and good luck!

Thank you! Yes, everything is vegan but I totally understand your need for more meat dishes. Under 'How To Eat' on each product page we've added what meat we suggest mixing with the dish. More detailed recipes to come! Thanks for the feedback.

Example: https://thebuttermilkco.com/collections/singles/products/sam...

Conversely, I've just ordered the Buttermilk Suite #2 because you mentioned that they were vegan! (I wouldn't have expected that from your company name...)

Same here; I saw the name and assumed most of the options would be full of paneer that I’d have to avoid (delicious as it is).

Just curious, is the decision to keep everything vegan tied to the 5 minute requirement?

No, definitely not! It just so happens that our first dishes ended up being vegan. We have a few recipes in our pipeline that are not strictly vegan but have the same convenience factor as all our current dishes.

Shipping meat in package seems like a great way for regulators to step in :|

Also it just sounds naaaaaaaaaasty lol

No reason for the above comment to be dead, so I vouched it.

However: Shipping meat in packages is pretty commonplace, you just need to keep it sufficiently chilled. (Maybe only frozen is acceptable?)

Check out Crowd Cow.

Awesome. Will take a closer look at those when I get home.

Thanks!

Adding meat to many of these dishes is not a big deal. Dry style or liquid style dishes aren't a stretch.

I was very excited to see this but after looking at the nutrition details, I was dismayed.

Upma 1 serving has 660 mg of sodium. Khichdi has 1760 mg of sodium. The daily requirement is 2300 mg of Sodium and if you are hyper tensive the requirements are lesser. Is there a reason it has such a high sodium content?

The pricing also seems high to me. I think your should rethink pricing. For staple items like khichdi, upma you should drop the pricing. I am confident that you will make it up with volume. If you price staple breakfast and dinner items too high, you will drive away your core customer base of Indian students. You want Indian students to buy your items in bulk for a month. Will a Indian student spend 200 dollars per month (20 * 10 (1 khichdi + 1 upma)) on your food items? You can use these staple items as lead gen tools to establish a long term relationship with your customers.

Sometimes food is prepared for flavor, based on a consensus of what tastes the best.

If more people affirm that a given recipe is the most desirable, it would be completely ridiculous to impose a lesser recipe upon the menu, if it sells poorly.

I can easily prepare low sodium pretzels, and try to sell them at the county fair, but what good would that do, if every passer by takes one look at my pretzels and asks, “Where’s the salt?”

Then I’m selling maybe 90% fewer pretzels, but wow! Look at the complements I get from those one or two people who appreciate the effort, but still don’t necessarily buy anything.

If three or four people out of one hundred are apt to complain about a detail like sodium, that the rest happily ignore, then keep the preferred recipe, and offer a separate low-sodium menu, optionally.

I, for one, really would like lower-sodium pretzels, because I always end up scraping off salt

We know that high sodium intake is a leading cause of high blood pressure which in turn leads to heart disease. I also don't buy products with high levels of sodium and I think this is true of a growing number of people as awareness spreads of the issue.

I read the OP as explaining why they won't currently buy the product, but what might change their mind in the future. Further, what's the problem with holding companies to a high standard? If the world consumed less salt health would improve.

>This week a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure. In May European researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the less sodium that study subjects excreted in their urine—an excellent measure of prior consumption—the greater their risk was of dying from heart disease. These findings call into question the common wisdom that excess salt is bad for you, but the evidence linking salt to heart disease has always been tenuous.... Intersalt, a large study published in 1988, compared sodium intake with blood pressure in subjects from 52 international research centers and found no relationship between sodium intake and the prevalence of hypertension. In fact, the population that ate the most salt, about 14 grams a day, had a lower median blood pressure than the population that ate the least, about 7.2 grams a day. In 2004 the Cochrane Collaboration, an international, independent, not-for-profit health care research organization funded in part by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, published a review of 11 salt-reduction trials. Over the long-term, low-salt diets, compared to normal diets, decreased systolic blood pressure (the top number in the blood pressure ratio) in healthy people by 1.1 millimeters of mercury (mmHg) and diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) by 0.6 mmHg. That is like going from 120/80 to 119/79. The review concluded that "intensive interventions, unsuited to primary care or population prevention programs, provide only minimal reductions in blood pressure during long-term trials." A 2003 Cochrane review of 57 shorter-term trials similarly concluded that "there is little evidence for long-term benefit from reducing salt intake."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-t...

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/we-only-th...

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/the-magi...

I am well aware of this because I have a hormone problem causing me to retain salt. So it isn't theoretical for me - I have to be extremely anal about it or else blood pressure medicine won't do me any good.

However what it boils down to in practice is that I've learned to not even ask whether you have a low-sodium menu. Because you probably don't, and even if you do, your idea of low-sodium is still way too much for what my body can take.

My solution is to only eat food prepared from scratch, or eat at specific restaurants where I can choose the exact ingredients that went into my meal. There is no point in restaurants trying to cater to people like me, because if they did I'd have no way to hear about it.

I'm serious about that. Advertising won't work because I've learned that advertising is misleading. "Reduced salt" means 25% less than a comparable product, which had several times what I could accept. Offering "healthy salads" won't sway me because I've learned the hard way that their salt content is usually just as high in practice as a burger and fries.

There are only two phrases that I respond to. "No salt added" and "Raw ingredients." If you're less restrictive than that, you're probably consuming too much salt. Even though you think that you're being good. So much so that if a normal person tries to eat what I eat, their first thought is going to be that the food tastes awful and needs more salt.

Incidentally for the record, our recommended daily allowance is 1500 mg, which is around 1/4 tsp of salt. Most adults in the USA eat more than double that. If you eat out every other day, you almost certainly are getting a lot more than most adults.

You should read this article that showed up on HN 2 days ago ...

Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study (theguardian.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17746420

Thank you for your suggestions, and appreciate your concerns.

- Sodium comes directly from the spices of the recipes. We don't add any for preservation or any other reasons, but we are currently working on low-sodium options for all of our meals! - Our pricing is based on the cost it takes to produce each dish. We make everything from scratch just as the home recipe calls for and include fresh vegetables, seasoning, spices, etc. Our products are more comparable to restaurant meals ($7-10) than instant meals ($2-4), although we fall closer to the instant/microwaveable meals range ($4-6). - Bulk options is a great idea and something we will definitely consider!

I was under the impression a) the relationship between salt and hypertension is far from understood and b) the daily value is likely lower than is supported by evidence.

As a home cook, things taste much better with salt, and they preserve better. Both are desired here in a packaged meal.

Furthermore this allows introducing a low sodium variant for those looking for it.

Seems like a perfectly fine amount of sodium to me. "An estimated sodium intake between 3 g per day and 6 g per day was associated with a lower risk of death and cardiovascular events than either a higher or lower estimated level of sodium intake." https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1311889

I agree on the sodium. There are alternatives like Good Salt which taste good (not all of them do!), which cut sodium terrifically and can basically be cloned for bulk production.

I haven't tried any, but the Chana Masala looks pretty reasonable, and has lots of protein! Put it over some whole grain rice, and I bet it would be pretty filling. (I'm sure you could say that for all of these meals).

https://thebuttermilkco.com/collections/singles/products/cha...

Dude, if this works, you're sitting on a goldmine!

I love Indian food, but I live in the middle of nowhere (more specifically in a rural area 10 miles from the nearest town). The closest Indian restaurant is at least 45 minutes away and the closest good one is probably over an hour away.

I'd buy this in a heartbeat.

Thank you!! Everyone needs good Indian food :) Hope you try it out!

Only suggestion in my opinion that matters : the food has to really taste great. Instant foods taste like hell generally. So this has to be significantly better.

Specially with Indian food, most Indians cook from scratch and the food only tastes good if cooked fresh with raw items/whole spices.

Congrats on the HN launch.

I remember you used to have more detailed nutritional information on your website. I recall this specifically because of noticing how much sodium is in the product. Am I misremembering? I guess a visit wayback machine would sort this out but thought I’d ask here first.

Thank you! We still have detailed nutrition information available on each product page (see pictures).

Good luck Mitra, I’m currently in the U.K. so can’t try it but one thing I’ve never seen done right is Indian food when it comes to takeaway/deliveries/orders, it’s never comes close to home cooked or restaurant quality so it’s a tall order for sure.

I had an Indian flatmate in London, who sent home pictures of the food he was "cooking". In reality, it was microwaved ready-meals from Sainsbury's. He was satisfied enough, although he was only 18-19 and might have had different priorities.

How would you rate the quality of these?

Regarding take-aways, Indian food has a history of being a fairly cheap option in the UK. (Everyone's drunk? Let's grab a curry!) I'd be slightly put-off a restaurant that said it offered take-away. There's a similar problem with Cantonese food, and burgers.

I haven’t tried Sainsbury’s but have tried Marks and Spencer’s frozen Indian dishes. It’s passsable if you’re desperate and missing it but the quality and taste isn’t great imo. I think some other food like Italian lends itself better to being reheated.

With respect to restaurants, I’m in central London, so not a suburb with many Indians, and there’s some decent places like Dishoom, Roti Chai etc but I wouldn’t say they’re cheap. Im thinking outer London in the west and then places like Birmingham probably have cheaper places but I never go out that far.

Why not order your takeaway from a good Indian restaurant? All the ones around here provide such a service.

Thank you! It's definitely hard to get right, but we're happy that so far we seem to be doing the job well! Even my dad (a very harsh critic when it comes to authentic Indian food) is a fan!

As a white American who loves Indian food. I don't associate 'Buttermilk' with Indian food at all.. I associate it with pancakes. I have a feeling I am not alone, and it could lead to some marketing confusion.

I love the family story on the site, and the design is beautiful. I agree with others that suggest the nutrition info should be a little easier to find.

We just subscribed to the Buttermilk Suite. Looking forward to trying it.

Thank you! Looking forward to your feedback + will definitely update the nutrition info soon!

You did a great job of making the "love from mom" feeling come through on the website. I think that's what made us decide to subscribe.

> In terms of market size: there are over 4 million Indian immigrants in the U.S.

This is the wrong market. What fraction of Indian immigrants spend over 10 dollars on a meal -- which is a waste of money at median income? How will you satisfy the nuanced tastebuds of Indian men who only prefer their wife's specific cooking on a daily basis? I would guess your actual market consists mostly of wealthy Americans who think all Indian food is "the same". I don't think too many Indians will go for this, but best of luck.

> What fraction of Indian immigrants spend over 10 dollars on a meal

The very first product they feature on the homepage, the "Out of Office" pack, is $23.50 for 3-4 meals.

First, you forgot shipping, which is $5.95 (for my location), bringing our total to $10 dollars per meal. The shipping conveniently says $0.00 until you actually proceed to checkout...

Second, each "meal" is 340 calories, which isn't even enough calories for a teenage boy. A teenage boy should be eating at least 700 calories per meal, and that's on a bad day.

So, correcting for real life, these meals come out to about $20 per meal.

I'm going to have to give an upvote for this because I agree that calling 340 calories a meal is misleading

> We’re also exploring new shelf-life extension technologies (such as HPP)

What is HPP?

HPP = High Pressure Processing or Pasturization. It's essentially doing the same thing to the product as dehydration would, but maintaining the freshness and quality of the food. While dehydration makes a product shelf-stable for an extended period of time, HPP food still requires refrigeration but can stay fresh for up to 90 days (sometimes more)!

A method of Pascalization:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascalization

Mitra - your check out flow is a bit confusing (not sure if it's a standard Shopify template or whether it's something you customized).

Two things that annoyed me: 1. In the beginning of the flow, you show logos of PayPal and Google Pay (I'm on Android), but I didn't get a chance to pick them later in the flow. 2. I was asked for my address twice (once by your flow and then again after the Amazon Payments redirect). Why didn't it preserve my address between the redirects?

Looking forward to receiving the items I ordered.

I just want to point out a small issue on your site. On the page https://thebuttermilkco.com/collections/all/products/the-i-c... the link to the khichdi leads to the page for upma.

As somebody with dairy allergies, I was going to avoid this, given the name, but since I saw you mentioned that the meals were all vegan (so far) I am tempted to give it a go.

Thank you so much for pointing that out! We will fix it ASAP.

Hi! As a South Indian and knowing something about how commissary kitchens work and having studied the NRI market base, I would strongly advise you to pivot.

You cannot compete with packaged foods wrt price point. You must also have something unique with no competitors. This market is too crowded. You had me at rasam and buttermilk..it’s because of the radar kinship, I want you to succeed.

If you are interested, I can help with pivot ideas but I honestly don’t think you can hit it at this market base with that price tag.

If they target people like me that absolutely will not eat even trace amounts of fructose, they might get somewhere. Our options are quite limited - most restaurants are absolutely terrible about putting sugar in food.

Love that you have experience in the Indian food space! I do appreciate the concern and would be happy to chat more if you'd like, to learn more about your findings.

How recyclable is your packaging and how much packaging do you use per unit of food?

Large amounts of plastic waste is a big reason I will never ever use blue apron and similar companies.

Our packaging is 100% recyclable and compostable! We take eco-friendly packaging very seriously. We use a single 4"x6" aluminum packet for each product, and ship all orders in thermal bubble mailers with compostable liners in recyclable boxes. Orders come with 2-4 gel packs that are all reusable and can be sent back to us if you don't need them.

For what it's worth, you're going to have to optimize away gel-packs somehow if you do want it to be handled in an eco-friendly way. The vast majority of people are going to throw those in the garbage. Sending them back to you is a huge hassle, and upcycling them won't scale for repeat customers.

Totally understand. I'm working on figuring out a better solution to gel packs for this exact reason.

I created an account just to chime in. This is an awesome idea. I've tried the subscription based models and hated how easy it was to lapse into another shipment that I didn't want. Also the other players seem to make the the recipes intentionally hard and you have to babysit the hell out of the recipes while cooking. That's no fun. For me, I want to impress the ladies without having to work so damn hard. Keep up the great work!

Little advice, it's the effort you put in that impresses the ladies more than the final taste. Adding water to impress won't work ;).

That having said, as a European person I'm always amazed at the "instant food" culture that seems to be the standard in US. Wonder if it will ever cross the ocean.

Don't get me wrong, I can cook pretty well, I'm going to be pouring the water in secret if these taste good! Maximize results with minimal effort :)

Haha. I imagine you as a little secret chef in the kitchen, keeping her out when she wants to come in to see what's smells so delicious in there. "Oh no no, it's my secret recipe, no peaking!".

Thank you! I had the same experience with subscription models which is why we've made Buttermilk different. Hope you enjoy!

I am excited to see this, given the shortage of prepared vegan meal services. Most of the ones that do exist are over the top hippy-dippy and expensive, rather than catering to the "lactose intolerant vegetarian from cultures where that's pretty normal" demographic.

I'm interested to see how filling I find them, since that's the problem I often have with prepared meals, but lentils and beans are a good start.

What's your unique value proposition? What's preventing the competition from copying you and selling the product at a lower price?

CMU alum '06, best of luck! I'll certainly be checking this out. Love the design, love the packaging. A little skeptical on the taste and fillingness - that's why I've already bought some chana masala ;) But it'd great to hit home the taste when looking at the product pages. That'd make it easier for me to pull the trigger and spend more money.

How is this different from products like Kitchens of India or Tasty Bites? Are you looking to compete with them on price or quality?

I'm guessing quality. I just ordered and the order confirmation said

> Remember that your packets are perishable, so refrigerate or freeze them as soon as they arrive!

That's definitely not true of Tasty Bites. :-)

Tasty Bites are super delicious though...

Yes, that is true. Our products are completely fresh and don't include preservatives so you get the same convenience as Tasty Bite, but the quality and freshness of a meal kit or making it from scratch. We'd argue that the taste is better, too ;)

Sorry if I shouldn't ask this on a public forum, but I'm pretty confused as to 'How does an international guy start a startup in USA?' I've even asked a question here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17770245

Can you please reply?

I'd love to give it a try but it looks like you only ship to the US. Are you planning to expand in the future?

I'd say the market is certainly there, and not just from Indians. In the UK curry is very widely eaten and many consider some dishes to be part of our national cuisine. While I've been abroad I've often struggled to find decent curry.

First thing that came to mind: this might be excellent camping food. One suggestion, OP, is to get this into the hands of the folks at Wirecutter: https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-camping-food/

Thanks for the suggestion! We've had quite a few customers use this for camping and hiking, although it's not as flexible for longer trips since it needs to stay refrigerated or frozen.

Any rationale for not using GMO ingredients?

Seems like a reasonable choice. There are people who won't buy their products if they are GMO, but the reverse is not true. (I doubt there's anyone who will only buy GMO products.)

Have you looked into Pataks? This company is HUGE in UK.

They provide jars with all the ingredients mixed. You need to add an onion, can of tomatoes and some chicken/beef.

Read their story here: https://www.pataks.co.uk/our-story

Super interesting, thank you!

I used to use these sauces a lot, as a student in the UK and for a few years after.

There's a scale:

1. Prepare everything from scratch.

For anything that isn't fairly simple, this is reserved for special occasions.

2. Use pre-prepared sauces like Patak's (there are also cheaper ones)

This still feels like "cooking", and scales up nicely to multiple hungry students without costing much more.

3. Microwave a chilled ready-meal [2]

There's a big price range for this, say £1-6 per portion. The cheap ones aren't very nice, and the expensive ones were too expensive as students, but were fine if I felt lazy once I had a job.

4. Order take-away.

I couldn't afford this.

5. Pour boiling water over instant noodles.

No-one admits to doing this sober.

[2] https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/shop/gb/groceries/chilled-/meal...

[N] There are suppliers in the USA: https://www.pataksusa.com/find-pataks

UK, Birmingham, within a stone's throw of the Balti triangle...

Also East End foods and Natco as bulk cheap national brands for various pulses. The local (predominantly UK born Pakistani/Lahore oriented) shops stock Laziza prepared masalas for various meals (chana, chicken, fish &c) and the fearsome mixed pickles. I find the prepared masalas very salty.

25Kg sacks of rice and 10Kg sacks of attar as well :-)

Hey, best of luck to you! I'm in the UK so unfortunately can't try this out. Your product looks great though!

To the rest of you - why is there so much negativity and doubt in this thread? HN generally has some negativity but it feels like there's a lot of mansplaining in here. Stop it.

> it feels like there's a lot of ideas in here. Stop it.

If you read the comments, you'd know that there's an unclear market which is a totally reasonable concern. HN is a place where people share their thoughts and concerns.

You seem to be getting some unnecessary hate in the comments here. I think this is a good idea, although the market is a bit crowded. But as a Pakistani, I would try this out once in a while when I'm abroad. Its also nice that your meals are vegan. Good luck!

"Our team spends hours in the kitchen tweaking each recipe so we can prep and cook it just enough"

This is super tricky to achieve. But, are you sure that this process is what makes your food flavoourful yet preservable by just freezing/refrigerating ?

Good luck though!

Yes, definitely! There is a lot of testing that goes into each recipe before we turn it into a product.

Are you Tamil? I've never seen Rasam being sold online or in packets like this before.

As a matter of fact, yes :)

Are there no nutritional facts for these items? I can't seem to find them on the site.

There are! You can find them on the single product pages on the last picture. (Ex upma: https://thebuttermilkco.com/collections/singles/products/upm...)

I would suggest making these either a bit clearer or easier to find. For example, on this page the image with the nutritional information is pretty small.

Pictures can be ok but I would really prefer the info in text/chart form

Noted. Will definitely update the website accordingly. Thank you!!

Congrats on the launch. I haven't heard of other businesses approaching the market, with similar angles (fresh, non-GMO). There's a trend now for boutique food brands - maybe you can ride this wave well. Goodluck to you again!

Great idea, will definitely check it out. Love Indian food. The packaging looks great too.

I am not sure about the name though. Buttermilk though is consumed in India more than other countries it does not seem to resonate with your product.

Good luck with the launch

I'm from Germany and I really like all Indian food I tried so far, also when I was in Sri Lanka (and I will be in India soon). So I would love to try something more authentic. When could I expect to order this in Germany?

That's awesome! We don't have international shipping on our near horizon but hopefully will be able to, soon!

Apologies if this was covered somewhere on the web site, but I wasn't able to find it -- may I ask what are the serving sizes? Are these individual servings suitable for one person, or for a larger group/family (4).

one suggestion- please provide approximate shipping dates to know when it will be shipped. You have mentioned that mostly it will take up-to 2 business days to ship but sometimes longer. But it does not mention for each specific order as that is the key information I was looking for when I was placing the order. Although you provide the information that it will be delivered in 2 days once you ship, I believe people order this primarily for the lack of time and get it in a timely manner so would like to know the approximate time it will be delivered.

For some positivity, I would love to have an option of actual, everyday Indian food available as an option to me. Indian restaurants in the US by and large suck, so I'm hoping you're successful!

I highly recommend the Instant Pot Indian cookbook if you want to try making stuff yourself.

Thank you! Appreciate the support.

Love the idea.

What would also be cool is if the consumer could possibly know the people or story behind each recipe. It would create a nice connection with each meal prepared, maybe adding it on the back of each pack...

Just a thought..

As a non-Indian who loves Indian cuisine, I’m intrigued to see some dishes I don’t recognize from the usual options at restaurants and in packaged goods. Are some of these regional specialties?

Yes a few are South Indian specialties (rasam, uppuma). Most indian restaurants in the US serve dishes from the north east of India that originated during the Mughal rule.

Yes! Most of our starting dishes are South Indian and we are expanding into other regions soon! Our goal is to make authentic dishes more accessible so happy to do so :)

I personally, as a North Indian, appreciate that these are authentic South Indian dishes because these are the most difficult to find in my Nebraska home, but also simultaneously, are my fav things to eat for breakfast.

Desi here.

I want to try your channa and dhaal. That's it.

Why can't I seem to order just those two? I don't want a pack of 3 channa. I don't want a pre-made pack. I want a la carte. Why can't I have it?

Oh boy! This could be the mother of all Indian food discussions. I know how Indians love to argue about their food. Seriously though, congrats on the launch. Can't wait to get a taste.

If you launched this in the UK, people would be falling over themselves to buy from you. The UK is massive on a) quick meals, and b) Indian food (all types).

I have such a visceral reaction to the clickshaming "I don't want 10% off" footer in your email list CTA. Please consider removing this.

I see you are talking about non-GMO ingredients. Are you also planning USDA certification for all/subset of your products?

Wish you better than the best.

Yes! We are also working on all-organic ingredients.

CMU Alum here. Just wanted to say congrats on this big step and hope you have all the success in the future!

Do you have any allergen info? My child has a severe peanut and tree nut allergy. Can he be accommodated?

Can you add a clear label of gluten free to the items that are please? Not a hipster, it makes me sick :)

Yes! Good suggestion.

Hi Mitra, I had a specific question and was wondering how I could get in touch with you. (Email in bio)

Where is the nutritional info? It looks delicious but I need to know if it fits my macros.

You can see it on each product page on the last picture (ex: https://thebuttermilkco.com/collections/singles/products/khi...)

Looks amazing. Don't forget the english ex-pats too - the Daal Pack looks lovely.

Thank you!

I feel like my Indian friends will just frown at this, most of them take pride of home cooked meals and they love to share it with us.

Having said that, I wish you luck, this is better business and idea then last 5 that were posted here (which I will not mention). It is like YC can find original people any more.

Anyhow, good luck!

When can I have it in Toronto?:D

Looks like a cool idea. I definitely need something like this.

Former CMU grad. Happy to see this. Wish you all the success in the future!

Has YC become a meme? Yet another company doing the same thing, and claiming subjective advantages over the competition.

Almost like companies are selected for being part of a story ('poor college student craves mums food') rather than being an actual business.

You can appreciate the willingness to jump and start a business and take it as far as being ready to ship out your product, but I agree this product just seems redundant. It has so many flaws that people have pointed out. Literally the only point the founder made that separated this from the competition was that 'ours tastes better', even though it is way more expensive.

Perhaps I was too dismissive, I wish them the best of luck. Maybe it's actually that delicious.

I'm just surprised to see another food company pop up, it's kind of like the latex mattress boom (Casper, leesa, etc) but those mattresses are ridiculously high margin products.

Remove the "$" signs from your pricing on your website.

Removing dollar signs usually suggests to me "upscale and very expensive." Is that what's intended here?

Why?

This looks great. I'm curious if your packaging is BPA free.

Can you share more about the "sustainable packaging"?

Yes! - Our packets are made from 4"x6" aluminum, FDA-approved packaging. - We ship in thermal bubble mailers (also aluminum) inside of recyclable boxes with compostable liners. - We include ice packs in each order that are reusable. You can also send those back to us if you don't want to keep them!

Keep up the good work. All the best for your endeavor. Cheers.

When do you plan to offer your products in Canada?

Where's the Korma?

Hmmm, no Guju packs...

Our daal is extremely Gujurati tasting! If you have a recipe you don't see, feel free to submit it here: https://thebuttermilkco.com/pages/submit-a-recipe

You are feeding into the irrational fear of GMO. I'm not interested.

Why is the sodium level so high? The dal pack has 1220 milligrams of sodium per serving? It seems rather unethical for you to be marketing high sodium products to a group of people that should not be eating a daily amount of sodium in one sitting.

Is everything offered that salty? My biggest issue with the packets of Indian food at Trader Joe's is how much sodium they have, otherwise I would eat 2-3 of those every day. I have to keep track of my sodium intake or my face bloats.

Actually, that's pretty low for an Indian dish. Many of the dishes (especially south Indian) have way above this amount o sodium. It probably makes sense to take that much sodium when living in South India as many places are hot and you will end up sweating the sodium out anyway.

We don't alter our recipes at all, so the sodium amount is unfortunately what's in our products to begin with. We are actively working on a low-sodium option to be released in the Fall!

You will have a hard time balancing the spice levels. You can't satisfy both Indian and non-Indian demographic or you will have to have a spicy, less spicy type of each item. As an Indian, I cant stand the westernized non spicy versions of the supposedly authentic Indian foods. So I wouldn't buy them nor eat in those type of Indian restaurants. Its the same case vice versa. Non Indians may not like the spicy versions.

Another thing to note that though its called "Indian food", there is no thing as an "Indian food", just like not everyone from India knows Hindi.

Indian food varies drastically as you travel from North to South, East to West. But for westerners, its mainly butter chicken/daal/Vindaloo/Paratha/Chapathi. For someone from South India, it will be Dosa/Appam/Idly/Idiappam/Pongal/Avial/Sambhar/Rasam or Fish curry. One of your challenges lies in catering to the Indian & Non Indians palettes alike. Greetings from Canada.

In my experience non-westerners tend to underestimate the level of spiciness that westerners can handle (particularly westerners who are culinarily adventurous), and overestimate the average spiciness of their cuisine.

If it's too spicy for me, it's too spicy for 99% of the population of any country, but it's damn near impossible to convince servers of that.

That's a good point -- customers definitely react to our spice levels differently. We use authentic, family recipes so people not used to spice sometimes have a hard time. We're exploring adding a lower spice option for each product, so hopefully soon!

I would also say that food from any region of India is Indian food, and you can further specify what type of Indian food by direction (i.e. South/North) or region (i.e. Gujurati/Rajastani/Tamil).

The tricky problem with spice levels is there's a weird masculine/masochism vibe to it all, along with a highly subjective scale. So we end up with some way overestimating their tolerance, and some way underestimating. Both of these leave your customers with negative impressions, rendering them less likely to come back.

Really want to help your customers decide? Bring out a little bit of each sauce; and a bit of bread to try it with. Have them move from the non-spicy to the spicier -- let the server know which one they liked best. Not only is this an inexpensive course of action, it lets restaurants avoid disappointing experiences and allows for an inexpensive teaser at the start of a meal.

I think this is a pretty tractable problem: plenty of non-Indians love Indian food for the spice, and anecdotally, I've had plenty of food like "thai hot" pad thai that's too hot for my Indian coworkers.

Palates will vary, but I'd expect the typical 1-4 pepper scale would give most people a good option. If carrying four variants of every item is too much of a challenge, the meals could include optional spice sub-packets.

Ordered takeout from a little Indian place in one of the more heavily Indian populated sides of Houston. They asked me what spice level I wanted, I said medium. They then asked, "Indian medium or American medium"?

Half of my Indian-American (first generation born in America) can barely handle any spice. That's just an anecdote, but I'm not so sure you can draw the spice line on whether or not someone is Indian.

Mnyeah. That sort of attitude has definitely turned out to be good advertisement for "Indian" cuisine in the UK. All the lads here will compete with each other to be the one to eat the spiciest curry, just to show how tough they are, presumably. One place I visited once even handed out certificates for the "Flaming Rectum Society" to my friends who ordered their Vindaloo.

To be honest, I find all this posturing a bit naff. Where I come from (Greece), when we say that a food is "spicy" we mean it's fragrant - not hot. I personally use at least half a dozen spices when I cook- cumin, cardamom, nutmeg, white and black pepper, paprika, kayenne pepper, cinnamon, allspice, clove, ginger, turmeric and even a bit of fennel. Those are all "spices", only one of them is hot and they're all meant to make your food a pleasure to eat, not a competition for who has the biggest ...

... tolerance to pain?

Well, I guess now we have learned that non-westerners are tougher than westerners. I'm sure that must be useful information, somehow. One day I may even understand how.

Btw, hot dishes go great with yoghurt, beause it takes away the burning feeling.

My guess is that they are not trying target typical westerners. There already is a lot of westernized pre-made Indian food you can buy at the supermarket.

Just make the mix non-spicy and let the customer add chili oil or whatever to taste.

I wonder if they could do something like include a capsaicin dropper and guidelines?

Been eating and making curry for years. From scratch, not powders. I cannot stand when someone tones down a dish because of my skin colour.

There will be many "unauthorized to work" highly educated Indian H4 spouses in the US delivering Indian food around your area. Please buy from them to support them.

>The options were expensive

5 Spice packets for 24$ isnt what I consider cheap, given I eat for an entire week on ~20$, including a curry chicken dish.

If I misunderstood(like veggies and beans are included), could you mention that in the product page?

That's a great callout! These aren't just spice packets -- they include everything you need for the dish like you mentioned. You can see the full ingredients list for each dish under 'Benefits' of the page. For example, sambar includes carrots, bell peppers, onion, tomatoes, spice and the full seasoning. The only ingredient missing is water!

Sambar: https://thebuttermilkco.com/collections/singles/products/sam...

Do you mind to share what you eat for 20usd/week and, more importantly, in which region you achieve that? I am in Italy, and I believe that budget would suffice for maximum one day. Thank you

Just milk and eggs are $20 week for me (5 eggs + 1.5 liter milk / day)

Can you post or have you posted elsewhere how you eat on that budget?

I don't get why you are getting downvoted. For that price, you could easily get a few pounds of the spices needed to cook those foods.

Did you ever shop at Kohli’s on Craig St?

Looks great, remove the "$" form your pricing.

I checked just a few items and saw 910mg, 1220mg, 1430mg, and 1760mg of sodium per serving!

That's an incredibly high amount of sodium. It would probably be unhealthy for most people to eat one per day, let alone 2-3. Maybe you can do something about lowering the sodium levels, but until then I don't think "healthy" is a fair word to use.

Yes definitely. We are actively working on creating low-sodium options of these dishes. Unfortunately, the sodium comes from the traditional Indian spices used in each dish so it's an intricate process to adjust the levels and keep the same quality and taste.

Not sure why you're downvoted, but the amount of sodium is definitely high and is a serious concern.

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