Looks amazing. Don't forget the english ex-pats too - the Daal Pack looks lovely.
Thank you!
Launch HN: The Buttermilk Company (YC S18) – Homemade Indian Food in 5 Minutes
201–210 of 454 posts
Re: Launch HN: The Buttermilk Company (YC S18) – Homemade Indian Food in 5 Minutes
#202Are you Tamil? I've never seen Rasam being sold online or in packets like this before.
As a matter of fact, yes :)
Re: Launch HN: The Buttermilk Company (YC S18) – Homemade Indian Food in 5 Minutes
#203I'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 :)
Re: Launch HN: The Buttermilk Company (YC S18) – Homemade Indian Food in 5 Minutes
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe you could offer low(er) sodium versions. I find 20% daily sodium intake is too much for a dish.
Do you eat more than 5 dishes per day? How are you going to get your daily sodium dose?
Since most people are overshooting by huge margins, that'd be among the least of my worries.
Re: Launch HN: The Buttermilk Company (YC S18) – Homemade Indian Food in 5 Minutes
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
>"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." The majority of Indian spices are mostly single element spices - cumin, coriander, fennel, fenugreek, garlic etc. Even Garam Masala probably the most widely used multi-spice doesn't contain any salt. Could you elaborate on which "traditional" Indian spices hav…
Sorry for the confusion! I meant to specify that the traditional spices like you mentioned contain sodium, not salt. We include red and green chillies, homemade garam masala, ginger, etc. all of which add up to increased amounts of sodium in the product. We are working on lowering sodium in each product while maintaining the taste and flavor.
Re: Launch HN: The Buttermilk Company (YC S18) – Homemade Indian Food in 5 Minutes
#206This 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 qualit…
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 authenti…
>"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.
Re: Launch HN: The Buttermilk Company (YC S18) – Homemade Indian Food in 5 Minutes
#207I 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…
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, “Whe…
I, for one, really would like lower-sodium pretzels, because I always end up scraping off salt
Re: Launch HN: The Buttermilk Company (YC S18) – Homemade Indian Food in 5 Minutes
#208Congrats 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.
Re: Launch HN: The Buttermilk Company (YC S18) – Homemade Indian Food in 5 Minutes
#209How 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/prod…
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.
Re: Launch HN: The Buttermilk Company (YC S18) – Homemade Indian Food in 5 Minutes
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, “Whe…
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 compan…
>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...