The Ledger
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Sukhi Singh says she would sell the business to the right buyer
“Yeah, so we would sell if the right person came along, I guess.”
Sukhi Singh sold her Oakland deli for $65,000 after paying $175,000
“Something we had bought for a 175, we sold for 65 and got out.”
Sukhi Singh: Traditional Indian recipes intimidate consumers with excessive ingredient lists
“You know, if you open an Indian cookbook and you look at a recipe, it has 14 ingredients on it, and people just shut the book and they put it away. It's too difficult to collect all that stuff, or to follow those directions, because cooking Indian food is very…”
In-store sampling converted 80% of tasters into buyers for Sukhi's
“30% of the people who would walk into the store would stop at the demo table, but About 80% of the people who would taste it would buy it.”
Food brands must sell instantly consumable products to drive repeat purchases
“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.”
Costco pays suppliers within 15 days, easing cash flow for growth
“But unlike retail stores or food service accounts, they pay you within 15 days. So you have not paid your vendors yet, and you get the money from Costco. So they're an excellent, excellent company to deal with, especially in your growth period.”
Sukhi's was consistently profitable before considering outside institutional investment
“We had never lost money to date. We'd always made money. We'd always been in the black. We did not take any loans other than off and on.”
Sukhi Singh stepped back from management due to lacking strategic scaling knowledge
“I personally, I had, I told the children, I said, listen, Somebody asks us to make something, we make it. But I do not know how to grow this business strategically anymore. I do not know. I need somebody else. I knew that I was at the end of my knowledge what …”
Sukhi Singh worked 14-hour days, seven days a week for 17 years
“So, you know, 17 years coming into the country, we worked, Surinder and I worked, seven days a week, 14 hours a day.”
The 1984 anti-Sikh riots prompted the Singh family to leave India
“And the riots were a tipping thing, but the main thing why we came to the U.S. Was that the kids, children would have a better education and a better future in the U.S. So we decided to just take the plunge and move.”
Sukhi Singh's Oakland deli made max profit selling 15-cent coffee for $1
“And it was the maximum profit making business because coffee only costs you 10 to 15 cents, and you sell it for a buck.”
Sukhi's first retail curry pastes launched without cooking directions
“And you know, the first orders that I put in, it had no directions, only net weight and ingredients, and the name Sukhi's curry paste.”
Store managers accepted Sukhi Singh's cold-call pitches 95% of the time
“I would just call the stores, and you know, 95% of the time, they said, just come in.”
HP's corporate cafeteria bought Sukhi's faster than retail grocery stores
“So for me, every delivery that I made to them was 500 dollars, and it was gone in two weeks. So it was better than any store. I would go and stock up a store, even Berkeley Bowl, I would put 300 dollars worth of product on the shelf, and it took, like, three w…”
Sukhi's secured 100 retail stores before prioritizing farmers markets
“We had the retail already gone to a hundred stores, and then the farmers markets and food service is what we concentrated on.”
Sukhi's did not miss a single farmers market after a kitchen fire
“So I was very lucky. I had this staff of Indian people who found this It's a restaurant in San Francisco. They had the cooking space available. So I sent off a whole bunch of people over there to start doing the samosas and the naan. And now I found another on…”