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

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

#181

Post by diiaann »

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...

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

#182

Post by mitraraman »

hpagey wrote: post #122

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…

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!

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

#183

Post by jelliclesfarm »

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.

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

#184

Post by mitraraman »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #97

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 c…

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!

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

#186

Post by opportune »

sjg007 wrote: post #120
mitraraman wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Maybe you could offer low(er) sodium versions. I find 20% daily sodium intake is too much for a dish.

That is perfectly normal for a meal with that many calories

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

#188

Post by mitraraman »

losvedir wrote: post #132

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 f…

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'.

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

#189

Post by mitraraman »

lasekar wrote: post #174

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.

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

#190

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

vram22 wrote: post #163
0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eit…

It would be fun to taste. The buttermilk I have tried in USA is bitter and tastes acidic.
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