Jarred caramelized onions. The only times I’ve had these were in Harry&David gift baskets and balsamic caramelized onion spread from Robert Rothchild Farm, They aren’t hard to make, of course, but time-consuming.
Vadouvan. I like the jarred powder from U Simply Season, but if you research vadouvan, you realize it should actually be a long-cooked paste, something I would not undertake, as it is heated to the brink of scorching.
Thanks for the thoughts. On caramelized onions: We’ve come across some very good jarred caramelized onions, including balsamic onions of different kinds. We may indeed carry some of those at some point, though some of the jars are bigger than we want to ship for now.
Hi, everybody! I hope all of you are well and coping well in these crazy times!
I’ll cut to the chase and then give more of an update. The short version is that we are now looking to launch as a snacks-and-hot-sauce subscription box company, and therefore, I would love your recommendations of snacks with a pretty long shelf life (so not goods that you pick up at your local bakery and eat the same day - think at least around 9 months’ shelf life before opening) that you miss when you’re not in a country you used to live in (other than the U.S., though we’re open to artisanal American snacks, too, if they’re not available in supermarkets).
The longer version is: When we were close to launching as a hot sauce subscription box company, we looked at our competition again and saw that, although no-one based in the U.S. had nearly as good a lineup as we did (and I say that because I have tried the hot sauces they are selling and we didn’t consider some of them special enough to sell), that market seemed saturated. And since we had already started looking at snacks as a nice extra to provide for our subscribers, we decided to shift gears and make this a snacks-and-hot sauce subscription box company. We have tried some excellent snacks and figure to focus on items with a spicy or at least savory component, not for example purely sweet snacks (for example, I tried a fantastic take on a trail mix that includes organic almonds, craisins and rosemary, Indonesian cashews with lime leaves and chili, fudge with chipotle and ancho, and habanero pralines). However, we don’t yet have enough snacks for a year’s worth of deliveries, so any ideas you can give me would be most welcome!
Though I haven’t lived in Italy, I have been lucky to have friends to visit there. One snack I miss is taralli, those satisfying little olive oil biscuits (some refer to them as crackers). I have even had an opened bag last for months back home, if I can stop myself from nibbling.
Kimchi products
Ie pouched kimchi, paste, sauce
Black licorice, sweet and salty
Israeli halva, tahini and couscous
Like these brands:
Shakam ezay, a spicy Bhutanese dried beef and chili concoction, like spicy chili crisp but mostly beef. Doubt it’s available for export.
I also love the Indian fried moong dal.
I’d say regional potato chips but not sure how long a pull date chips tend to have.
Subscription boxes may be kind of saturated but if gathering is still discouraged, shipping treats for the holidays should be more popular than ever. How close are you? I think that even if the assortment isn’t as huge or perfect as you want, you should focus on launching something by next month, even if it’s just a few set box options for individual purchase and not a subscription. Just saying this because gift sets are what I am working on, I think this winter will be all about sending care packages.
Yes to care packages. I already foresee having to do holiday get-togethers via Zoom instead of in person. Could be nice to be able to share and partake of the same treats, even if it must be at a distance.
That Bhutanese item sounds amazing!
Potato chips can have expiration dates around 9 months down the line, so they can be OK and we’ve looked at some with interesting flavors.
tomatotomato, is there a particular brand of taralli that you can recommend?
Thanks to everyone for your suggestions, and if anyone has any more ideas, please keep them coming! What’s most helpful to me is recommendations of particular brands where possible, because I’d need to try a sample of each product before we’d consider selling it.
Babette, the idea of selling individual gift sets is interesting and something I can share with my partner. There’s an advantage to subscriptions, which is that we can lower the price of each box for customers who are getting, say, a year’s worth of boxes, so that’s something we need to consider, too.
Not really. My purchases have been of any taralli on the shelf. I look for olive oil and simple ingredients on the label. No additives.
I love potato chips but they can take up an awful lot of room in a box, especially if you have to cushion them against jars/bottles.
That’s absolutely true, but it depends how big the bag is. Very flavorful potato chips don’t have to be in a large bag to satisfy. And of course we definitely have to insulate them.
