It started with a gap on the shelf
1989. Meat everywhere, flavour nowhere.
South Africa had butcheries on every corner and supermarkets filling up fast, but the spice on their shelves was an afterthought. The big suppliers looked after the big names, and everyone else took what they were given. We decided nobody should take what they're given. So we started supplying spice to businesses of every size, and treated the smallest butchery like the biggest account we had.
The decision that made us.
In the beginning we bought spices and repacked them. It paid the bills, but someone else's spice meant someone else's standards, and that never sat right. So we stopped repacking and started blending. Flavours nobody else had, tested on the toughest audience in the world: South Africans at a braai.
Then the sauces came.
Five years in, the people who trusted our spice asked a simple question: what about sauce? We brought sauces onto the production line and they moved as fast as the spice did. The name over the door changed to what it is today: Calcutta Sauces & Spices.
Still hungry.
Thirty-seven years later the recipes are still ours, the factory is still ours, and the range has grown past 100 products, certified halaal, kosher, gluten free and vegan. If you've tasted braai in this country, you've tasted us. South Africa knows the flavour. Africa is next.
