The Buttermilk Chronicles
I am a late bloomer when it comes to Lunch Club — people who carry their lunch to office. I have been working for 17 years, and most of the time there was a canteen in the office which served hot food.
With the advent of food delivery services, such as Swiggy and Dunzo, the lunch was more varied and convenient. But the packed food delivered quickly is still stale. And mostly, lack of yoghurt or buttermilk drove me crazy. I am the person who does not go well with the heat, even though I hail from an arid tropical climate.
So the adventure started with a simple desire, BYOB — Bring Your Own Buttermilk. I wanted to have ample supply of buttermilk throughout the day so that I can keep my body temperature down and somewhat quench my thirst and hunger. I already carried a laptop bag to office and a simple thermo-steel flask would not be huge difference.
What I assumed to be simple hunting the amazon task was a long and arduous journey which made me wonder what are the major manufacturers are doing.
I started with nostalgic Milton — a trusted name from my childhood days. It was the best in the quality and keeping hot stuff warm and cold stuff cool. And with the current state of art with eCommerce websites and deals, I had lot of options available online (opposed to limited options in an offline store — where the shop owner tried to sell you the product with biggest price margin).
Taking a detour — I wanted to get on the BYOB bandwagon quickly and regular cycle mandated that I buy three items of the same product. The first flask will be used in the day and will need cleaning which will only possible the next day (maid comes in the daytime when I am in office) so I have to have second flask for the next day. As Lunch Club is new to me and I am forgetful kind of person when it comes to belongings — I have to take the third flask in case I forgot one in office. So in each step I bought three and lost a lot of money exploring options — hoping that the current step would be the last step.
I put my deal hunting cap on and kept the daily deals from amazon on my radar (maybe lidar) for flasks. And voila, I got the thermosteel flask with nice sipper and jazzy flip top. My son got hold of the flask and started playing — off came the cap. The top cap was connected to the sipper with a rivet which was not flattened on the sides. How can anybody put a rivet without flattening the edges to make the ends bigger than the hole? The small pin came off and kept coming off.
On to the next product, let’s try the one with traditional stopper and cup cover. Oh nice it comes with a bottle bag as well! Everything was good till the day I had a late lunch — the buttermilk turned sour. It might be the case that the buttermilk packet, I bought, was expired; but I wanted the thermosteel to take care for more than four hours.
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On to the research mode on eCommerce sites — what different products were publicising? Borosil caught my attention — copper coating between the thermosteel walls to keep hot things hot and cold things cold for longer time. My current knowledge — copper is better conductor of heat than steel — was under duress. Copper coating should make the things achieve the room temperature faster than steel.
A little research on the Internet educated me that Copper is a better reflector of themal infrared and high microwave energy. That meant that thermal coating will help the Borosil flasks keep things temperature controlled for a longer time.
I started with the 650ml bottle and was happily having my buttermilk satiation, till the point where Lunch Club plunged into and started sharing my Buttermilk. Most of the colleagues were Borosil tiffin fans and thus with the current design of lunch bags were unable to carry flask along.
It just takes about four inches of elastic and twelve square inch of elastic net to allow a bag (lunch bag or laptop bag) to allow carrying a bottle on the side. Yet Borosil with a huge variety of lunch boxes chose not to add the bottle side carrier! What are the product designers thinking? Or are they thinking at all?
To cater to the Lunch Club desire I upgraded to another Borosil flask with inbuilt tumbler. This was full 1 litre flask. But the product I received was too tall for my bag! I have to downgrade to 850ml flask which fitted my bags with great tucking.
Hunting through the deals, I came across InstaCuppa with 1 litre flask with wide mouth. I ordered the same and was awestruck at low profile of the flask. It was shorter than the 850 ml flask from Borosil sans the copper coating — yet claimed temperature control for extended periods. It had a wide mouth and the bottle itself had wider diameter — it fitted perfectly my bags. InstaCuppa lead to a spin-off in the fruit-infuser and green-tea for my daily needs — but that will be part of separate chronicles.
InstaCuppa is probably a eCommerce only company catering to just Amazon. Some entrepreneurs found this product in China and bulk ordered a container shipment, then started selling online. That makes me wonder “What the Indian companies doing?” Why can’t they just make similar flasks with dependable performance and customer trust. Seems like India is lagging China.
InstaCuppa is nice, but it is really expensive. And the problem starts with the flask caps — there is no tumbler to share and the caps are really non functional for Buttermilk. I fiddled with carrying different tumbler to share, but the lunch bag was becoming bigger.
Finally come Polo Lifetime — my current mainstay for Buttermilk flask. It not only comes with a tubler top, but also a strainer and a really nice vegan leather bag of its own. Again some entrepreneur picked up existing product from China and started selling online. If I segregate the additional items it comes out to be lot cheaper than InstaCuppa.
So I can blame InstaCuppa for being greedy, but the traditional companies (Milton & Borosil) share a huge blame for thwarting innovation, not understanding customer needs and paying salaries to a completely useless product development team. Milton does not understand the Copper coading and Borosil is going haywire with flask variety with vary in miniature size steps — 300, 500, 700, 850. Seems like Evil Corp (Mr. Robot) in making.
