Tandoori Sep/Oct 2014 | Page 17

marketing A multitalented T foodie ake a look at the various social media platforms and Twitter in particular and when you scan all its foodie crowd and cooks and chefs, the one name you can’t miss out on is Asma Khan. Her supper clubs, under the banner of the rather elegantly named Darjeeling Express have made lovers of Indian regional cooking a mustattend event. From a domestic cook to a supperclub star for sure, but even that is not enough for her. Khan has this year - along with her ongoing supperclubs – had an 8 week chef’s residency at a central London pub, The Sun and 13 Cantons, which she says went very well. “I kept the menu very small and changed it weekly,” she says. “The food was traditional Calcuttan dishes - prawn malaikar, chicken chaa , fish with mustard seeds, sirka gosht and more. The unexpected hit was the puchkas (pani puri). It was interesting to see many first time English and European customers bravely ordering a dish they had never heard of and some ending up with tamarind water all over their suits! Khan’s real scoop so far this year has been though as a startup for a smartly packaged and marketed tamarind chutney – the first in a new range from her. She states: “I thought about launching a chutney after getting very positive comments from my supperclub guests about the chutneys during the dinners. As www.tandoorimagazine.com 017_TM_Jun_Jul14_Marketing.indd 17 From being a leading London supperclub host to a caterer and resident guest chef, Asma Khan has now even launched a chutney to boot. She talks to Tandoori to call the tamarind chutney a tamarind sauce so no one bought the bottle and was disappointed there were no chunky bits in it! Over four days at the festival, we had buyers from Selfridges, Wholefoods, Fenwicks and Not on the High Street visiting our stand and we sold the bottles to the general public.” The reaction to Khan’s chutney has been overwhelmingly positive and is available on Not on the High Street www. notonthehighstreet.com/ darjeelingexpress. n we had the chutney fresh in India, I was unsure about the bottling process. But when I spoke to a couple of friends of mine, they gave me invaluable advice on how to bottle the chutney. Then when some customers came to my pub residency asking for the chutney to take back to the office, I realised the time had come to bottle it. I came back that night and ordered the bottles online – and the business began.” As luck would have it, Khan was very fortunate to get a good platform to launch the chutney. “I was enrolled at the School of Creative Startups,” she says, “for their one year business course for creative businesses. At the end of the course was a pop up MakeGoodfestival at Selfridges Old Hotel. I launched my chutney ‘Imli Timli’ at the show. I did some market research and realised there was a difference between the British idea of a chutney (they expected it to have chunky bits in it!) and the south Asian concept of a chutney. I decided September/October 2014 2014 // T A N D O O R I 17 27/08/2014 12:08