The Jaggery Project

I didn’t start out wanting to build a food brand. I became an engineer. I learned to solve problems with data, iteration, and relentless testing.

Then I became a founder. And everything I learned about systems engineering applied directly to building a food brand.

This is not an origin story about growing up watching my family make jaggery. It’s not about tradition or nostalgia. It’s about the specific, repeatable principles I used to take a product from zero to something people actually want — and how those principles work regardless of whether you’re building software or food.

What Building a Food Brand Taught Me That Software Never Did

When you’re building a food brand, you can’t hide behind abstractions. There’s no “we’ll fix it in the next sprint.” A customer eats your product. They taste it. They know immediately if it’s good or if you cut corners.

This forced me to think differently. In software, I could ship a feature and iterate. With food, iteration means sourcing new crops, testing batches, waiting months. The cost of being wrong is real. The cost of rushing is tasted by a customer.

But the principles are identical to any engineering discipline: measure, test, learn, repeat.

The Product-Market Fit Moment

In 2021, we sold 50 packets of jaggery in one year in Maple Valley. That was our first market. Fifty packets. One year. The velocity was so slow I questioned everything.

Then we moved to Bellevue and Sammamish. Same product. Same package. Different market.

We sold 50 packets in one week.

That number hit me differently. Not because 50 is more than 50. But because it told me something about the system. It wasn’t the product that failed in Maple Valley. It was the distribution. It was the market fit.

That’s an engineer’s insight: isolate the variable. Change nothing except location. Measure the output. That data point — 50 packets per week instead of 50 per year — proved to me that this product would work if we scaled distribution correctly.

Every decision I’ve made since then has been grounded in that lesson. Don’t assume the market rejected you. Measure which variable actually broke the system.

Three Non-Negotiable Values (and Why I Don’t Compromise on Them)

Building a food brand means making thousands of tiny decisions. Use cheaper packaging? Extend shelf life with a preservative? Source from a new supplier who promises better margins?

I’ve turned down every offer that violates three values:

1. Organic, certified. I refuse to use any ingredient that isn’t certified organic. This isn’t a marketing claim. It’s a commitment that says: we don’t use pesticides, we don’t use synthetic fertilizers, we don’t take shortcuts on the source.

2. Forty calories per packet. I measure this. Jaggery varies wildly depending on how it’s made, where it’s sourced, how much moisture it contains. Most producers guess. I don’t. Every packet is individually measured so you know exactly what you’re getting.

3. Individually wrapped. Portability is a feature, not a nice-to-have. If you’re busy, if you want one packet with your morning coffee, if you’re traveling — individual wrapping makes this product accessible. I won’t go back to bulk bags.

Why hold these lines? Because I’ve tasted 38 years of jaggery.

I’m not a marketer who discovered this product last year. I’m the son of sugarcane farmers. I grew up in a family that has lived this plant, this process, this ingredient for my entire life. I have tasted so many samples of jaggery — even blindfolded — that I can tell pure jaggery from something with additives in seconds. I know what good tastes like. And I know when I’m compromising.

These three values are where that knowledge lives in the brand.

The Authenticity Proof That No Marketing Can Buy

This is the part that gets me. There’s a real risk in the food space that someone can dress up in the costume of the thing and sell you a story.

Some tech guy discovers jaggery, thinks “this is exotic, this is ethnic, this could be a brand,” and then sells you a narrative about tradition and heritage without actually understanding any of it.

It’s the opposite with me.

I’m not exploiting something I discovered. I’m bringing something my family has understood for generations into a modern market in a way that preserves what makes it good. The authenticity isn’t something I’m claiming. It’s something you can verify by checking where I come from.

My parents are from a sugarcane farming family. This isn’t a brand identity I invented. This is my actual inheritance. And the care I take in sourcing, testing, and packaging comes from growing up watching people who take this seriously.

That authenticity is worth more than any marketing spend.

Building a Food Brand Means Accepting Slow Feedback

In software, I could deploy code, watch metrics update in real time, and make decisions within hours. In food, a customer buys a packet today. I might get feedback in three days. I might not hear anything. I might hear feedback from someone who got it from someone else.

This forced me to get comfortable with a different timeline. It also meant I had to think more carefully about each decision, because the feedback loop is so much longer.

An engineer building a food brand learns to live in that tension: move fast enough to matter, but slowly enough to measure correctly. Don’t rush a batch because you want quick wins. Wait for real feedback.

What I’d Tell Any Engineer Thinking About Building a Food Brand

If you’re a technical person and you’re thinking about building a food brand, here’s what I know:

Your tendency toward measurement, iteration, and testing is your unfair advantage. Most food founders are brand people or operators. They feel their way to decisions. You will out-systematize them.

But you have to accept that food has constraints software doesn’t. You can’t iterate as fast. You can’t change suppliers on a whim. Your supply chain is real. Your ingredients are real. Your customer is tasting the outcome of your decisions, not reading about them.

That’s not a limitation. That’s a feature. It means your decisions have to be thoughtful. It means you can’t fake quality. And it means if you actually build something good, the product does the marketing.

Start by finding one metric that matters. For me, it was velocity per market. Once I knew the product worked in Bellevue but not Maple Valley, everything else followed. Find your metric. Measure it obsessively. Let the data tell you what’s actually broken.

The Journey Continues

I’m four years into building The Jaggery Project. I’ve learned more about supply chains, quality control, and customer psychology than I ever expected. But the core principles remain:

Measure. Test. Learn. Don’t assume. Let data tell the story.

That’s not an engineering philosophy applied to food. That’s the universal language of building something that works.

If you’re curious about how we’re applying these principles or want to try the product, visit The Jaggery Project. And if you want to learn more about our mission and approach, read our story.

For more on the specific ingredient we’re focused on, read what jaggery actually is. And if you’re wondering how to use it, here’s a guide to pairing jaggery with morning coffee.

Building a food brand isn’t magic. It’s measurement. It’s integrity. And it’s the willingness to move slowly when necessary and decisively when the data says so.