The Buttermilk Company
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
The Buttermilk Company was a Seattle direct-to-consumer food startup founded in 2017 by Mitra Raman, a Carnegie Mellon graduate and former Amazon Go software engineer. It sold instant Indian meal packets made from fresh, preservative-free ingredients: customers added hot water and microwaved for five minutes. Dishes like Sambar, Daal, Khichdi and Rasam cost $6 each, with meal suites at $39. Recipes were crowdsourced from the local community, which shared in sales. A Y Combinator Summer 2018 batch member, it grew 30-50% month-over-month, mostly organically.
02 / The Buttermilk Company FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Raman herself shut the company down: her essay 'Goodbye Buttermilk' tells why she closed her first startup. The business operated in the crowded meal-kit and food-delivery market, which had begun cooling — peers like Sprig, SpoonRocket and Maple had already failed — and could not reach sustainable economics on $120,000 of outside funding.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Founded in Seattle
Mitra Raman starts Buttermilk in October 2017 with a small Seattle beta, selling just-add-water South Indian meals.
- YC and nationwide launch
Raman quits Amazon, joins Y Combinator's Summer 2018 batch, and launches nationwide with subscriptions and new dishes.
- Shut down
Raman shuts down The Buttermilk Company, recounting the decision in her 'Goodbye Buttermilk' essay.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Raman shut down The Buttermilk Company in 2021.
- 02
The company is listed as Closed/Dead in startup databases.