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