All I can really start with is – a lot of lessons were learnt throughout the six months of our sea salt flavour journey. I went from complete novice to novice and still on a journey to learn more about flavours. Before I started, I came up with a few specific rule to abide by:

• Must not have more than three ingredients
• Must be supplied from a reputable source in Tanzania
  • Organic is important
• Must be simple to process
• Must be replicated on scale
• Must have three different culinary uses
• Must have a connection with Tanzania
• Each flavour must have its own unique taste
• My mum must like it – probably the most important

Pre-production

Before I started to mix and match ingredients with our sea salt, I wanted to have conversations with some familiar people and complete strangers. I know how I would use flavoured sea salts but how and why does a diverse group of people use flavoured sea salts. Unsurprisingly, customer insights create the foundation of Asilia. I spoke to over 100 people (and counting) on their cooking regularity, product uses, favour combinations, and asked them to list three different flavoured salts for their kitchen. On top of this, I also examined some online homemade recipes to see what amateur to professional chefs were conjuring up.

I analysed all this information to come up with some starting combinations. I did the recipe creation and development in conjunction with the interviews. I wanted to constantly evolve the process rather than as a stage by stage process. The flavour combinations were tested using a human senses test and prospective food combinations.

So, what did I find? Tastes and opinions have a significant range but can be categorised among food types. I learnt this from a great book called: The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit. I used Niki’s flavour pairings to analyse how our salt flavour would be best used. It was also an initial validation test to see whether we were going in the right direction. Time to test them out…

Production

It began with my kitchen and twenty different ingredients to work with – pretty daunting. Over a month long period, I would create and test a flavour combination every evening after work. I ate a lot of food that months! Every Saturday with the help of Karen, my mum, we would review the combinations I created and send them out to some of her and my friends. I collected feedback on the combinations and recipe examples. These feedback was scored and added to the spreadsheet.

This spreadsheet was becoming inundated with information and data so I made the decision to take all the information and scores to have five different flavours that aligned with the taste categories from xxx. Our flavour range was born! I will make this point, you can have endless inputs of information, data, and ratings but if you gut feeling is that it wouldn’t work, then it wouldn’t work. It’s pretty obvious but belief is a very powerful tool to have and mixed in with useful data then you may  just have a winning mix! Let’s hope so anyway.

Post-production

So what next with these five flavours? Referring back to point two, I needed to find some good suppliers. I quickly found out buying directly from the source is infinitely better than middle men. From my experience, the quality is higher and costs are lower but the minimum order quantities are much higher. As we developed, we transitioned from merchants to buying from producers.

The next aspect was to test if anyone would actually buy it. I literally went to some of the smaller, boutique stores in Dar Es Salaam and tried my luck. Our products getting onto shelves was the primary aim so I added advantageous payment terms for example. I attended farmers markets like the ‘Swahili Farmers Market’ which enabled us to get feedback every month. Constructive feedback is gold and enabled us to continuously improve our products. I gained so many insights into the flavours and the different recipes that our customers tried.

We made small changes to our flavour recipes and production methods. Eventually, we reached a point where we needed to make a significant investment in machinery to improve our production techniques and product output. Out with the kitchen blender and in with two food processors that turns dry foods into powder within seconds. It was a game changer in time and quality. This was a catalyst moment for Asilia salt and we haven’t looked back since.