Scaling up traditional flavors for contemporary consumers

The client is a young startup called Mish that is focused on creating innovative foods by reimagining traditional Indian sweets (called mithai) for modern consumers. The company offers a couple of spreads that are made from nut-based mithai popular across India. These spreads have also been used as the filling for wafer rolls.

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Mish’s core focus is on nostalgic innovation, taking traditional flavors and reimagining them into innovative formats. The target audience for this product is not just domestic consumers but also the Indian diaspora living in other countries for whom this could be  positioned as a taste of home.

Mish’s founders are from a legacy mithai shop family and they leveraged this background to create spreads based on traditional sweets – specifically kaju katli (made with cashews, milk, sugar, and spices) and badam pinni (made with almonds, wheat flour, jaggery, and ghee). But they had no experience in the retail space.

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While Mish already had the product concept and initial prototypes locked in, the company wanted support in terms of commercializing the products. As part of this final goal, the company first needed shelf-stable and consistent products manufactured at scale as well as a go-to-market strategy. 

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The founders of Mish had a couple of very important specifications for the final products: 

• The spreads could not have any added flavor and would have to rely on the original flavor of the sweets.
• They also had to be free of any preservatives while having a long shelf life.

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When Mish created the prototypes for the spreads, they made them in small batches at home. Making scaled up quantities was not something the founders were familiar with. 

To take the product to market, Jay and his team recreated the products keeping in mind larger-scale manufacturing. This meant looking into the end-to-end process of launching a new product, including:

• Ensuring raw material consistency
• Recipe standardization
• Designing the scale-up process
• Cost optimization, including procurement and pricing
• Finding a third-party manufacturer
• Working with a designer for packaging and label compliance

Jay and his team also had to address the two specifications laid down by the client.

No flavor additives

Since the product was being positioned as a kaju katli spread, it had to taste like the sweet. The easiest way to do this to get consistent flavor throughout the product is with the use of flavor additives. But since the client was insistent that such additives not be used, Jay and his team provided support to scale up the existing manufacturing process to replicate the table top product.

Jay was able to have the product ready for launch within just six months. As a result, there are two preservatives-free mithai-based nut spreads in the market with a shelf life of six months. There are also two wafer roll variants available featuring each of these spreads, While it is still early days, reception to the spreads and the filled wafer rolls has been positive. 

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Jay is continuing to work with Mish to support their growth and expansion. This includes:

• Launching three more such spreads inspired by Indian sweets
• Bringing down the price points
• Expanding into the B2B and HORECA channels
• Educating consumers on how the spreads can be incorporated into a number of different consumption occasions. 

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