Dips'

Labels

Fri, 27 Oct 2017 08:32:43 -0700

Launching

When launching Dips there was a lot to think about and obviously, as a food product the flavour comes out as the most important thing. However, there are a lot of other things that need to be considered too.

Packaging
Design
Pack size
shelf presence

and of course labels.

We had no idea how much legislation there is around labels and the goal posts are constantly being moved, for larger companies this is not so much of a problem but as a small brand trying to get a foothold in the market it can be something that can put real pressure on your business.

Not only is there a ton of legislation about what you can and can't put on your label it can be quite hard to get hold of anyone in trading standards to check it over (this is not their fault they are woefully understaffed and these requests can take up a lot of time). All of this combined can make it very difficult to make sure your product labels legal.

Luckily I found a reasonably priced freelancer that can check your labels and is very helpful his name is Pedro Mendez he was recommended to me and we can't recommend him highly enough.

Once you have made sure your labels are legal you then have to figure out what you are going to print your labels on and find someone to do it for a price that is reasonable for your product. When printing labels the options are endless

Transparent or white stock
foiling
thick paper
matt or gloss finish
one colour or multiple colours
Fluorescent pigments (these can be very tricky to achieve)
UV flexography or EP digital or Letterpress or hotfoil or thermal or gravure label

Our suggestion on this front is to talk to lots of different people involved in the print trade shop around and talk to other people who are having labels printed and...Read More

Preserved Lemon Chutney and Cheese Scones

Thu, 19 Oct 2017 04:48:02 -0700

This recipe came about when we were looking to do some quick snacks for people to munch on whilst having a few drinks for a charity event Feedup. Feedup is a place where you can host pop-ups and supper clubs and as a consumer every meal you buy on Feedup you will be paying for someone else to get a meal too. Which is a win-win in our book you get a lovely slap-up meal and someone else also who couldn't afford a lovely meal gets one too.

Ingredients

150g Flour

45g Butter

85ml Milk/Butter Milk

7.5g Baking Powder

small pinch of Salt

50g Extra Mature Cheddar Cheese grated (plus a little bit extra to top the scones)

50g Preserved Lemon Chutney (make sure you get some of the preserved lemon skin)

Recipe

We make these in a mixer with a dough hook as it reduces the chances of over mixing the dough.

Sift flour and baking powder into the mixing bowl add butter (make sure it is cold) milk (we actually used a mixture of 1/3 milk and 2/3 whey which we got from Wildes Cheese), a small pinch of salt and preserved lemon chutney and mix (you can do this by hand if you wish).

The dough should be quite a wet dough once everything is mixed add the cheese and just mix for another 20 seconds until the cheese is mixed through the dough.

Turn out onto a liberally floured worktop and roll out until the dough is about a half an inch thick. Cut into 10 equally sized pieces and put on a baking tray lined with baking paper.

Egg wash the top of the scones and sprinkle with some more cheese.

Bake on 230 Celsius for about 20 minutes if you tap the bottom of the scone you should get a slightly hollow sound if you don't bake for a few more minutes.

Once baked put on a...Read More

Diwali

Thu, 12 Oct 2017 05:44:17 -0700

Next week is Diwali. What is Diwali? It is actually the Hindu new year actually technically Diwali is new years eve Bestu Varas is new years day and literally translates to sitting year (i.e. new year).

As with most celebrations, Diwali is accompanied with many different foods both sweet and savoury. Around this time in our house, here are some of the foods you would find.

chakri / Chakli/ murukku

These are delightful circles of wonderful crunchiness. Made using rice flour, yoghurt or sour cream, sesame seeds, cumin, chilli, ginger salt and lemon (at least this is what we put in them in our house) they are a savoury snack that is delicious to munch morning noon and night.

Chevdo

Think pimped up Bombay mix (it is so much better than Bombay Mix) you have a mixture of fried potatoes ( shredded and crisps), along with fried phoa (which is a flattened rice), fried moong dal, peanuts, cashews, fried chana dhal, turmeric, salt, chilli, mustard seeds, asafoetida icing sugar, curry leaves and coriander. Other people add golden raisins for more sweetness.

Puris

The delicious little fried breads. We make these using our medium brown chappati flour, a bit of oil and warm water to make a soft dough. Leave the dough to rest and turn them into little balls roll out into small discs (approximately 8 cm in diameter) and fry in hot oil. They should puff up and make sure you fry them until they are golden brown on both sides. These can be found at pretty much any celebratory event.

Mathiya/Mathia

Many an argument has been had in our house over our favourite colour of Mathiya. Mathiya is a crisp not dissimilar to popadums but made using moth flour (moth flour is a type of bean that is ground down and turned into a flour). This is flour is mixed with papad Kharo ( a form of sodium bicarb that works well in the making of papad), salt, sugar, pepper powder and ajwain to form a dough which is...Read More

The Rebrand Part 2

Thu, 05 Oct 2017 05:35:35 -0700

Seems a bit of a cliche, but when running a business everything takes 3 times longer than you think it should.

For example, take our rebrand when we undertook the project of doing a rebrand we thought it would be a quick month or 2 at the most. Boy were we wrong, nearly 6 months later we are finally closing on the finishing line.

There are many reasons as to why this has taken longer than we would have liked it too and we can't go into them all here, but it is important to realise in business that what maybe super important to you (usually because your business is like your heart and your soul) may not be the top of the list for the person that you are contacting or working with.

This is something that is often forgotten.

We are doing business with people everyone's lives are super busy and as business owners, there are always one hundred and one things to do and as soon as you tick one item off the todo list there have already been another 10 added to the list.

We feel that it is irrelevant to think that B2B (business to business) is different to B2C (business to consumer) as everyone you come into contact with makes a decision on you as a person and as a business owner your business should reflect who you are and what you stand for.

A while ago we were approached by someone to turn our Preserved Lemon Chutney into a chocolate. We actually already have a company Fifth Dimension Chocolates that make a chocolate using our Preserved Lemon Chutney (along with many other interesting and delightful flavours).

It would have been quite easy for us to say yes (and make a quick sale) and in all likelihood, it would have been a very different product from the one that is being made by Fifth Dimension Chocolates. The reasons for saying yes to a company are just as important as the reasons for...Read More

Quick post

Thu, 28 Sep 2017 00:36:15 -0700

Busy week

It has been a super busy week so we haven't had much time to write a lengthy blog post this week.

We just want you to know we are still here for you as you are like family to us and like family sometimes we lose touch with people for periods of time but when we see each other again it's like we have never been apart.

If you have any questions and wish to stay up to date with what we are doing (and we are always doing loads) then please feel free to subscribe to our blog post.

Next week will hopefully be a longer post and we will give you some more great ideas on what to do and who we are.

3 ways to use our BBQ Sauce

Wed, 20 Sep 2017 03:25:33 -0700

1. The obvious

Use it as a wonderful condiment to dip your chips in. A particular favourite of ours is to fry some fresh chips smother in extra mature cheddar add some bacon pieces and grill until the cheese is oozy and molten. Then smoother in our BBQ Bonnet Mmmmmm it is making our mouths water just thinking about it.
Alternatively, for the vegetarians fry off some peppers, onions and garlic in touch of oil, add salt and pepper and toss your chips in the resultant mixture smother with BBQ Bonnet et voila a simple delicious bit of comfort food to get you through the winter months.

The winter BBQ

Even in the depth of winter (which we have not reached just yet), a BBQ is a great thing. We like using a drum BBQ as you can get it going close the lid and let your meat infuse with all of those wonderful charcoal smokey flavours (without having to freeze to death). As Hindus we don't eat beef but if you want a wonderful brisket recipe we have found this one here (which the reviews say is great) https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1508666/texas-barbecue-brisket obviously you don't need to make the BBQ sauce as you can use our delicious sauce instead.

One that (some) in our house east is a wonderful BBQ Hunters chicken. Butterfly a chicken breast and stuff with some cheese. Roll the chicken around the cheese then wrap the chicken in some nice streaky bacon (which helps keep the cheese in and keep the chicken moist) place on a medium heated BBQ (if you have a lid close it) cook for about 10 minutes then pour some of our BBQ Bonnet over the chicken and cook for a further 10 minutes or until the chicken is cooked all the way through dousing in more BBQ Bonnet if...Read More

10 things you might not know about Gujarat

Thu, 14 Sep 2017 09:18:42 -0700

1. It is the only place outside africa to have wild lions

Gir Forest National Park in Gujarat is the only place outside of Africa where you can spot Lions roaming in the wild. It is also the only place where you can find the Asiatic Lion in the world.

2. gujarat is the state with the longest coast line in india

With over 1600KM of coastline Gujarat is the Indian state with the longest coast line which lends itself to international trade and has allowed 45 ports to date to be built along its coast line allowing the state to handle 35% of the national cargo.

3. The Largest producer of processed Diamonds

The city of Surat which is known as Diamond City has seen the state become a key player in the in the multi billion pound international diamond trade. 80% of the world's diamonds are polished in The Diamond City- Surat and the only Non-Jews in the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Diamond Bourse are Gujaratis.

4. Gujarat is the largest producer of milk in India, Amul – Anand milk is Asia’s biggest dairy

5. Gujarat has The highest number of vegetarian

Which has seen main of the big American chains make pure vegetarian versions of their restaurants. The world’s first pure vegetarian Subway, PIZZA hut, Domino’s and McDonald's 2nd outlet was opened in Gujarat.

6. If gujarat was a nation it would have been the 67th richest nation in the world above many European and Asian economies.

7. Gujarat has the first AYURVEDA university

Ayurveda is defined as

This university is probably the reason that Turmeric Lattes were invented (sorry if you don't like them).

8. Gujaratis represent 5% of india's total population

Within that the live on 6% of the surface area of India, but hold more than 30% of the equity of all Indian stocks in the share market currently.

9. gujarat is actually a dry...Read More

Awards

Thu, 07 Sep 2017 05:22:41 -0700

We have always been told to celebrate the small victories along the way and as a company we were very fortunate to win Great Taste Awards in both our 1st and 2nd year as a business. This was amazing for us and validated our products and provided some feedback on where we might be able to improve our product.

Unfortunately we could not make it a hat trick of years as we didn't win any this year. We have to admit it did hit us hard as we really pride ourselves on the flavour of our products and we try and ensure that every batch we make tastes as good as it can.

Now we have gotten over the fact we didn't win any this year it has provided us with some more steel and determination to ensure that our products have the most incredible taste that you can find.

Since we received our feedback we have made minor changes to a couple of products hopefully this will address any of the concerns that were raised and increase the flavour profile even more.

If you hadn't noticed from this post so far flavour is super important for us so we are always looking for feedback from people we meet and we have done many events,farmers markets and shows to gather as much information from people to trying and give people a product that not only we like but one that other people like too.

Just a word of warning on this front. When making a product there is no point in making a product that tries to please everyone.

We have been trying to carve our own niche and we are the only company that we have found that makes a Preserved Chutney of any sorts. In doing this it means you will come across people that don't quite get what you are trying to do as they don't know what it should taste like they only know if they like it or not (sometimes they can't even decide that). The other problem you will get is that people are unsure on how to use it. So alongside marketing the...Read More

3 Reasons for a Rebrand

Thu, 31 Aug 2017 04:53:32 -0700

Over the last few months we have been (and still are working on) a rebrand for Dips'. There were several reasons as to why we decided to do the rebrand but here are the 3 big reasons for us.

1. Shelf Impact

We are looking to move our product into retail and therefore it is super important for us to make sure our products have the right impact on shelf. At the moment our labels look really pretty and people actually really like the design elements and when we are at shows and can engage people directly they really like the taste of our products too. The problem lies when we aren't there to sell the product after some testing we found that people could not pull the information they needed quickly and easily from the label that would allow them to figure out if they wanted to buy it or not. (You can see how busy shelves can get below)

2. Packaging

Making sure that the packaging reflects your company brand and ethos. It is very important that the packaging you select reflects your brand and your business. When we started out the biggest driver for us was cost. As all people starting out on a new venture and bootstrapping a new business cost is a big driver as it will help set the price of your product. When we first started out our main aim was to make sure the flavours and products are as good as they can be and although we are still constantly testing and tweaking our products to make sure they taste their very best our focus has moved on. We are now looking at the packaging and as our product is more expensive (due to the fact that we take our time to produce excellent products) than other comparable products out on the market then it is important to make sure that the packaging reflects this. We have a couple of options that we are looking at and have noticed ourselves that it makes a massive difference to the look and feel of the product.

3. Story

At the moment we don't feel that our current...Read More

Collaborations 2 we have done and others we would like to do.

Thu, 10 Aug 2017 04:34:56 -0700

Fifth Dimension Chocolates

I have been lucky enough to know the guys down at Fifth Dimension chocolates for a number of years now and they have always done imaginative, exciting and different flavours. Over the years they have won numerous awards both nationally and internationally and represents the care and attention they put into each flavour and the respect that they give to their key ingredient chocolate.

It was at a business event at the British Library where we (Dips) were just starting out on our journey that I met Russell. Russell is the inventor behind the flavours many unusual flavours that Fifth Dimension Chocolates have made. Although Albert does have a lot of input and is chief taster with regards to if a flavour or set of flavours work well or not and makes some key suggestions when developing new flavours.

We always knew that our Preserved Lemon Chutney would work well with chocolate and through this lucky chance meeting we had the perfect opportunity to test this theory out and see if it will work or not. Russell played around with the Preserve Lemon Chutney and tried it with several different chocolates (not just milk, white and dark but also different cocoa beans from different places have very unique flavour profiles that work differently with any given flavour). He also tried several different ways to incorporate the flavour of the lemon chutney into the chocolate and ended up incorporating it into a ganache. Once the chocolate and the way the flavour had been decided upon the next question that needed to be answered was what shape the chocolate going to be. We had no idea that the shape of the chocolate had such a big impact on the flavour but through Russell and...Read More