Year Three at PLB — What Changed, What Didn't

Three years ago, we sat in a small kitchen in Guwahati and tried to figure out if anyone in India wanted to buy charcuterie made by two guys who'd never run a food business before.

The answer was: enough people. Not a stampede. Enough.

What changed

The team grew. We're more than 15 now, plus a small floor of production and packaging staff. Most of them trained and became experts here in PLB - they know what good cured meat smells like before it's even tasted, which is the only kind of quality control that ever worked.

We shipped four Pork Bites flavours and seven new Pork Crackle flavours. Lemon Pepper because we couldn't stop snacking on the test batch. Korean Chilli because someone asked. Ghost Chilli because someone dared. Salted Egg Yolk because it took us four months and we needed to ship it before we got bored of tinkering.

We figured out Pork Lard. Not just how to render it - that took three months in 2023. But how to bottle it so it lasts on a kitchen shelf without going funny. How to ship it across the country without it melting and resetting into a uniformly disappointing puck. How to convince home cooks who'd never used it that this wasn't a weird ask.

We shipped to most major Indian cities. We learned the hard way that "express delivery" means something different in Tier 3 vs Tier 1.

What didn't

Still cured by hand in Guwahati. Every Bites pack is cured for more than 20 days. Every Crackle pack is one batch, one flavour, one day of frying. Every Lard jar is one render, one strain, one fill.

Still no maida. No MSG. No flavour enhancers we couldn't pronounce in any language we speak.

Still small enough that I read every WhatsApp reply myself. (Hi, by the way.)

What's next

Year four is about cooking. We're going to publish recipes — real ones, the kind your grandma would recognise — using our snacks as ingredients. The first one is paratha with lard. Next is chorizo fried rice. 

We're going to expand the Crackle range one more time. Probably masala-led — but the test kitchen has been arguing.

And we're going to ask you what you'd like to see. So if you've got an opinion, write to us. I'm reading.

— Gaurav
PLB Snacks