The Exchanges

Q So I guess around this time, this is the mid-nineties, um, you got a call from somebody working at Hewlett Packard. From what I understand, they were looking to, they wanted to buy a tandoori oven for their cafeteria because they had so many Indian employees. At, at HP, and they were calling you for, for some advice. Is that, is that right? What happened?

A She wanted to rent a tandoor. So she called me, and I said, who told you I have a tandoor? I didn't have a tandoor. But it aroused my curiosity, and I said, so can I come and see what you're doing? But I had no idea that this thing called cafeterias are there in these huge buildings. And so she said, sure. So I went in, and I looked at her, and she was roasting the onions, and And making the sauce for the curry, and she had to do it, because nobody could do it right. So I told her, I said, why would you be wasting your time? Buy my curry paste, and your 10 dollar an hour employee can do the curry for you. So she got very excited, and she started buying my things, but I had to increase the line very quickly, because just doing curry, and Tandoori wasn't going to make it for her. She needed other items as well, like gobi aloo, or dal, and all that stuff. And I wanted to maximize my sales, so I quickly put together a spice mix for the vegetables and a spice mix for the lentils and started selling her that as well.

AI assessment note: “She wanted to rent a tandoor. So she called me, and I said”

Q I mean, it sounds like your mom was, was like, A role model for a very career-driven parent, uh, was your dad the same way?

A Well, dad was not really born to be a doctor. He loved cooking, and he loved doing hobbies like fretwork and all that, and so there was a constant friction between the two of them because she was so concentrated on her career, but, uh, she paid a lot of attention to our growing up, and my dad supplied all the rest of it, like cooking and You know, he, I remember we were the first household in which a Westinghouse oven was brought because he was going to cook some sponge cakes, and we all sat by him and learned how to make sponge cakes. That was his real interest was in that, but he again became a doctor because his father was a doctor.

AI assessment note: “dad was not really born to be a doctor. He loved cooking”

Q Um, and you started a family, and by the way, were you a good cook? I mean, did you, did you like to cook already at that young age?

A Yes. If I saw somebody cooking something that I liked, I never forgot it. There used to be a maid whom my grandmother loved, and she would only eat food cooked by her hand or her own hands. So we had this little, uh, mud stove, not stove, it's like a cook, I don't know what you'd call it, but in Hindi you call it chula, outside in the veranda, and she was, had an iron wok on top, And she made this eggplant and potato dish. I used to love it, and I remember the recipe even now. So, you know, cooking I was fond of, and then my father pushed us into all this baking and stuff as well, and so we learned how to make fish fingers, how to make trifle puddings, how to make kidney pies, ah, very, very young age.

AI assessment note: “Yes. If I saw somebody cooking something that I liked, I never forgot it.”

Q Right, and this was a critical pivot for you, right, when, when you decided to expand into frozen markets. Meals. Um, so do you remember what your thinking was, like, how you came up with that idea?

A Well, you know, we were doing these demos crazily all over the Bay Area, and I was doing a demo at Whole Foods Palo Alto when this lady came by, and she says, you know, never go out of business. I love your product. It's a great product, and I said, ok, let me ask her a few questions. So I said, so how many times do you use my products? She says, well, we eat home three days a week, and I cook Indian food at least once in three weeks. And I told myself, I said, this bottle is going to cook four pounds of curry for her and she's not going to come back to buy this for another four months. But then she was checking out her groceries, and I was checking out lunch for myself, and I saw the stuff that she'd bought. She had four frozen food entrees, and this one bottle of curry paste sticking over there, and I said, Sookie Singh, you're going the wrong direction. You need to have something with the consumer and come back for the weekend again, rather than just this one bottle, which is going to last them, and then maybe even after using it twice, she forgets about it. And throws it away. That time I decided we have to do something which is instantly consumable and they come back for more. That's where I started pushing food service and the frozen food and all because I knew that we had to grow in areas which would be there year round.

AI assessment note: “That time I decided we have to do something which is instantly consumable”

Q And, and what kind of food did, did the deli serve?

A It was just a regular sandwich place, breakfast and lunch, salads and sandwiches. I used to open the deli at 6:30 in the morning. From six 30 to 1030, we had already done 350 dollars. And it was the maximum profit making business because coffee only costs you 10 to 15 cents, and you sell it for a buck. And the biggest attraction to us of this deli was the fact, you know, we had come to the United States for the kids. And we had decided very early on that one parent would be at home to see the kids off to school, and one parent would be at home when the kids came back from school. That was a big driving force in us selecting the kind of business we did.

AI assessment note: “It was just a regular sandwich place, breakfast and lunch, salads and sandwiches.”

Q Wow. Ok, so you were helping to manage this business. How did you feel about doing that, doing that job? Was it fulfilling? Was it interesting?

A It was a lot of learning for me. You know, my brother-in-law, as I call him, my business guru, he taught me everything, and he also expected a very high degree of, uh, like, you know, I got my driver's license, and he said, oh, now you have your driver's license, just go and get the city permit for this truck, this heavy truck. And I just got my license today, but I wasn't going to tell him that I'm not going to do it. I just took the truck and I went and got the license and came back. But you know, it's things like that he expected me to do, and I just did them because I wasn't going to tell him I don't know how to do it, which taught me a lot of stuff and gave me a lot of confidence in being able to do stuff on my own. So how to balance a checkbook, how to call in salary, how to do banking, Because these drivers would come back with change coming out of the ears, so we had to roll them all up at night and then do bank deposits every second day, because you couldn't have all that money in the house.

AI assessment note: “It was a lot of learning for me... which taught me a lot of stuff”

Q So where do you see, I mean, you're a privately held company. I mean, do you, is there a world where you might consider selling to a larger company or, you know, what are your thoughts on that? I mean, I'm sure it, it's come up or it may come up. What, what do you think you would do?

A There came a point in the middle, when we had just set up the San Leandro kitchen, somebody came to us and said, we'll buy the company for so much, and we'll give you a job in it, and we got really tempted, because their childhood, the children's childhood, was going and doing demos, and weekends, we didn't give them any holidays, we didn't take any holidays, and we didn't have enough money at that time to buy a house, so we got very tempted, and we came home and talked to Uh, Dalbir and Sanjog. Bonnie had already got married. And, uh, we said, we are planning to sell the business. And Dalbir said, why are you going to sell the business? I said, because we're giving you such a rough life. We want to be able to let you have a childhood, which you're not having at this point. And he said, so are we complaining? You mean to say that when we come into this place, it will belong to somebody else? We don't mind the hard work. This is the place that we get together and we plan things and do things together. We have no issues of not having time off, and we didn't sell. But, you know, I'm not getting younger. My husband is already retired. Dalvir has kind of stepped partially away. He still gets involved in the company wherever we need him to. Yeah, so we would sell if the right person came along, I guess.

AI assessment note: “we would sell if the right person came along, I guess.”