{"id":360630,"date":"2026-09-30T09:42:33","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T09:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/360630\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T09:42:33","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T09:42:33","slug":"this-brooklyn-born-food-brand-brought-achaar-to-grocery-shelves-nationwide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/360630\/","title":{"rendered":"This Brooklyn-born food brand brought achaar to grocery shelves nationwide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chitra Agrawal can still taste her aunt\u2019s lemon achaar. As a child, she would suck on the lemon rind in the traditional South Asian pickled condiment. The achaars she grew up with reflected her family\u2019s roots: mustard oil and root vegetables from her dad\u2019s North Indian heritage, and sesame oil and sour ingredients such as tomato, tamarind and gooseberries from her mother\u2019s South Indian roots.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Achaar is a staple in many South Asian pantries. But Agrawal saw that, unlike international condiments such as kimchi and harissa, it was unfamiliar to many non-desi Americans. She also saw a gap affecting fellow South Asians: she said many Indian stores in the U.S. carried achaars that were high in sodium or laden with preservatives.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Both gaps became the foundation for Brooklyn Delhi<\/a>, the food company she launched in 2014 with her husband, Ben Garthus.<\/p>\n

From family recipes to Brooklyn pop-ups<\/p>\n

\"\"Chitra Agrawal developed her own versions of achaar while cooking, teaching and hosting pop-up dinners in New York. Credit: Courtesy of Brooklyn Delhi<\/p>\n

Agrawal\u2019s path to launching Brooklyn Delhi grew out of years she spent blogging about her family\u2019s food traditions<\/a>, hosting cooking classes and organizing pop-up dinners. She adapted the food she grew up eating to seasonal produce local to the New York area. Agrawal also collaborated with chefs on cross-cultural meals, including Indian-Chinese and Indian-Mexican supper clubs. In the process, she developed her own versions of achaar.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The business began, as and is still largely, a two-person operation: Agrawal developed the recipes, while Garthus, who had experience working in food packaging design, helped create the brand. For the first few years, Agrawal would make the achaars in a soup pantry in Brooklyn and sell them at markets around the city.<\/p>\n

When they began taking online orders, Agrawal packed them on a table in a closet in their Prospect Heights apartment and walked them to the post office.<\/p>\n

Agrawal\u2019s food blog had already given her a community of people interested in her cooking. Selling at Smorgasburg and other city markets put the products in front of new customers and food writers. Some specialty store owners discovered the company through press coverage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other opportunities came from simply walking into stores with samples. That\u2019s how Brooklyn Delhi got into its first Whole Foods Market. After a visit, the chain\u2019s local \u201cforager<\/a>\u201d eventually contacted her, and Brooklyn Delhi became a featured local vendor when the Williamsburg store launched.<\/p>\n

Agrawal later showcased their products at the Fancy Food Show in New York and California, putting Brooklyn Delhi in front of buyers from retailers such as Sprouts.<\/p>\n

Teaching shoppers about achaar\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Brooklyn Delhi\u2019s early market appearances helped introduce its products to new customers and food writers. Credit: Courtesy of Brooklyn Delhi<\/p>\n

However, getting the products into the big leagues meant they could be seen by many more shoppers \u2013 but didn\u2019t mean those shoppers knew what they were looking at. Agrawal recognized the need for in-store cooking demonstrations \u2013 but that was something the small startup couldn\u2019t regularly afford.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brooklyn Delhi\u2019s partnership with Blue Apron helped. In 2017, the meal-kit company began buying large quantities of Brooklyn Delhi\u2019s achaar in branded sachets, introducing the product directly to consumers. The collaboration also showed how achaar could move beyond Indian dishes and transform everything from pizzas to a smash-burger aioli. The business has since expanded into plant-based simmer sauces, heat-and-eat meals and chutneys. Tikka masala is one of its grocery-store bestsellers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Scaling without losing its essence<\/p>\n

\"\"Ben Garthus stirs, left, while Chitra Agrawal pours chili powder, right, as the co-founders collaborate on Brooklyn Delhi products in the early days of the business. Credit: Courtesy of Brooklyn Delhi<\/p>\n

\"\"Credit: Courtesy of Brooklyn Delhi<\/p>\n

The business eventually grew beyond what Agrawal and Ben could produce themselves. Blue Apron alone sometimes required millions of units and specialized machinery. It wasn\u2019t feasible for a bootstrapped two-person company to build its own facility, so Brooklyn Delhi began working with a manufacturing partner.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The company moved its operations to a manufacturing facility in the Hudson Valley in 2017. The couple moved nearby after she and Garthus had a baby. Affording family life in the city while running a business was tough.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, Brooklyn \u201cis very much a part of both my story and the DNA of the company,\u201d Agrawal said. She developed most of the brand\u2019s products in the borough and still returns several times a month for meetings and events.<\/p>\n

She and Garthus remain the company\u2019s only full-time employees, working with contractors on marketing, finance and operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite Brooklyn Delhi\u2019s scale, Agrawal said she never wanted to make achaar more marketable by giving it a more generic name or watering down its cultural specificity. When people didn\u2019t recognize the condiment, she gave them an entry point by explaining what it is, showing them how to use it and making the flavors approachable. She took the same tack in her cookbook, \u201cVibrant India,\u201d which centers on her mother\u2019s South Indian recipes and Agrawal\u2019s own twists.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can bring people along without losing the story, flavor or cultural context that made the food special in the first place,\u201d Agrawal said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chitra Agrawal can still taste her aunt\u2019s lemon achaar. As a child, she would suck on the lemon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[134025,98,100,99,134026,9,24,63,134027,134028],"class_list":["post-360630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-achaar","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-indian-pickles","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-food-business","tag-south-asian-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}