> 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

Most commonly. I'm in North America and that's also true for the hing here. Though I have found other fillers, which is good for people who need to avoid gluten (atta has gluten).

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.

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

You might get this in some Indian stores.

http://www.amul.com/products/amul-pouchbuttermilk-info.php or try this https://www.amazon.com/Amul-Masti-Spiced-Buttermilk-1Liter/d...

Interesting. Could be because it is somewhat stale, maybe. (Was it bought from stores, what you tried?) Same happens in India. Fresh home-made buttermilk tastes good, from just after being made up to say 24 hours or so. After that it does get more acidic, particularly in warmer weather or if not kept in the fridge, although I might call it sour instead. Not found it tasting bitter though, as I remember. Could be you had bad luck and it was quite old stock.

A quick cooking hack when you're out of buttermilk at home is to add a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice to a cup of milk. So I always assumed the sourness/acidity was the defining feature of buttermilk. It would be interesting if there were types of buttermilk (and recipes requiring them) where this was not the case.

Interesting, must try that out sometime. In India paneer (a sort of Indian cottage cheese) is made that way, by putting lemon juice in hot milk, which makes it curdle. Then the curds are put into a cloth and hung up for a few hours to drain off the whey. What's left is paneer, which can be eaten raw, or used in dishes like palak paneer (spinach with paneer), mutter paneer (green peas with paneer), some Indian sweets, etc.

>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.