Spice up your tastebuds with Spice Story’s desi flavors

Chutney is a must in every Indian household. One can find it on the margins of the plate in every meal, as these are a big part of the food repertoire. However, strangely enough, there is not a single brand in the country that can claim to offer a range of chutneys to the consumer. If someone can buy ginger garlic paste from the market so, what stops us from buying a chutney? Well, this is exactly what led to the birth of Spice Story.

Soumyadeep Mukherjee, founder & chief executive officer had initially created only three products. When Gayatri, co-founder & chief marketing officer & Vibhor Rastogi, head - New Products & QC joined him, they worked towards adding to this range. They were trailed and almost instantly got great responses, now three years down the road, Spice Story has over 12 different authentic variants from different regions of the country that are vegan and also available in Jain-friendly options, such as:

• Mango Mustard from Kolkata

• Mint Chutney from Delhi

• Agra ki Saunth

• Gujarati Tamarind & Dates chutney

• Sandwich chutney from Mumbai’s favorite street food and much more without any chemical aftertaste.

Spice Story has recently also launched ready-to-eat coconut chutney, which has a 10-month shelf life. Along with Liquid Nolen Gur, which is a specialty date palm jaggery from west Bengal. And all these traditional flavors are packed in a modern-day convenience format. Hence, the chutneys are packed in squeezy bottles – making them easy to pour and store.  

Spice Story is currently present in five cities – Mumbai, NCR, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Kolkata with 2500 offline stores and online grocery channels Amazon, Flipkart, Jiomart, big basket, Swiggy, and Big basket. While online helps build awareness and recognition, offline helps build presence and scale for a brand. Therefore, the brand continues to drive both.

By the end of the 2022 financial year, they aim to build their offline presence to 15000 stores and penetrate these markets further.  

Ensuring taste and hygiene 

Spice Story hot fills all the chutney and has much lower preservative usage – at the end of the day, a balance has to be maintained. “We can’t expect a consumer to finish a 200g bottle in three days. What’s also important is that the chutney is consumed as a side, to add balance and flavor to the meal. By itself, the sauces and chutneys have a huge health connotation as the balance of herbs, spices, greens, and vegetables in the chutney is meant to aid satiety and digestion,” says Rastogi.

Unapologetically fun and conscious packaging

A chutney is a small flavor bomb. It has the potency to make food unboring. Likewise, Spice Story is all about creating fun food stories. “Our promise translates as our signoff - ‘The end of boring’ Our logo is a bright fun take on our brand personality - A curious adventurer. Unexpected. Always out of the ordinary. Never Boring and unapologetically fun. A hidden ‘surprise´ is always a part of it,” promises Gogate. 

The packaging takes the promise further bringing alive the authenticity of the place where the chutney comes from. At the end of the day, food is a sensory cumulation of multiple experiences, which includes the place it came from, who cooked it, and whom one shared it with. On the practical side, one mustn’t forget that India is a land where the recipe and taste of tea change every 100km. Naturally, every region makes chutneys in its style and variation. It helps when knowing beforehand what to expect.

Mukherjee & Gogate proudly shared that sustainability is one of the key pillars of their brand, and while MLX bottles are the need of the hour, Spice Story went plastic neutral as on July 2022. 

“We tied up with the disposable Company to help us drive the process. While we aim to implement some other ideas shortly, at the organizational level, we are conscious individuals working to reduce paper usage, printing, recycling, and much more. We believe every bit helps,” they said.

Road ahead 

The brand Spice Story wants to build a ‘desi food brand’ starting with chutneys, it aims to work on ready-to-cook pastes, spices, snacks, and drinks. The intent is to grow 12x in the next three years. 

Message for all budding entrepreneurs 

“Being an entrepreneur is tough and more than often a very lonely journey. It takes a lot of passion and grit. But at the end of the day, we would say nothing endeavored nothing gained. There is nothing as giving as building something of your own. It has been a journey full of ups and downs but what’s important is to have faith and hang in there and most importantly, have fun when you come up for air. Ignore the nay-sayers. Having said all that, nothing is stronger than faith, especially when backed by consumer numbers,” Mukherjee & Gogate concluded.