You like hot sauce, want some for free? Help our business out-

throw a badass label on the first one and you're golden. i like some of the other shapes to but the first is the most practical i think.
 
If you want something gimmicky to maybe start it off, create a super-sized version of the hot sauce. For example, Cholula once made a 3 litre bottle of their hot sauce. I looked every where, but could never find it for sale. Would have bought it on the spot.
 
flow is really important because if you have a wide open top like you do with a cork, youre going to dumping out way to much sauce onto whatever food your eating. i think it would be awesome to do something similar to how really nice olive oil is sold, where it comes corked but has a separate pour spout that comes with it. like have a top like this attached separately.

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of course keeping that kind of top on all the time would make it ard to keep fresh since the spouts that seal themselves are more complex / expensive, and youd only get one of those for a permanent refillable bottle. so i dont know
 
Cork will require more complex bottling equipment, and likely some sort of tamper evident seal depending on your customer - the grolsch style or some type of a screwcap will probably be easiest for you.

Also don't forget that if you're going for organic only 95% of the ingredients need to be certified organic for you to put "Organic" on the label or 70% for you to put "made with organic ingredients." And definitely do some accelerated shelf life and temperature stability testing to make sure the product doesn't separate before sale. Not sure how unique your product is but if it's a low acid food you may have to be concerned with botulinum.

Should be a great product, there could definitely be room in the market for premium hot sauces. What kind of production scale are you guys starting out on?
 
I love the look of the corks, but they're simply not practical, as has already been stated. I like number three the best, but the cork just isn't a good way to keep everything sealed. Unless, of course, you had a sweet plastic label to wrap around it.
 
Great info on the organic stats, i will have to look into it. Thats just my most recent idea seeing as how the organic market has exploded, and only 10% of all food bought nationwide in organic, giving us huge growth potential in that market. I havent priced out what an organic product would cost but im under the impression its 25% min more to produce. Im being overly optimistic in shooting for 30 gallons a week or 4.3 gallons a day if everything shapes out by mid-summer, thats 500-550 finished bottles a week. Thats my target with a full time job in a non-professional kitchen setting. Sometimes i feel like I'm allready getting my self in over my head. Ill have to see exectly where the next few weeks better yet 60days takes me.

In terms of shelf life testing ive been thinking of the logistics the past few weeks trying to figure out the best ways to go about it. I bought some test bottles, figuring im gonna make a test batch, let it sit for a while and send it out for analysis to make sure its safe to eat, than purposely age a bottle by exposing it to heat, sunlight, change in temperatures, and sending that one out as well to see what it can withstand. Still trying to think of other ways to go about it. No better PR than getting everyone sick once they eat it for the first time ha ha.

 
Number one, with all the hot sauces out there, you NEED to stand out, not only with your flavor, but with you bottle and label.
 
of course +k to all you dude, hopefully it can hold everyone over until the free samples and swag start flowing (T-MINUS one month hopefully)
 
The short, stocky bottle would different. I feel like most hot sauces come in a tall, skinny bottle, so it would be cool to see something new. The cork is interesting, but not too practical, I would think. I bet it's cheap though. NS seems to have reached a consensus, number one. The top is way cool, and has my vote for sure! You sound like you know what your doing and are aimed towards success. Good luck!
 
i was thinking this, if possible, i really like the body style of numero two. but the cap is sick on number uno
 
number 1 for sure, especially if your logo/name/etc "matches the style" of the bottle, but all in all, 1 is the coolest and most appealing.
 
If you're going purely for looks, I would say bottle number 2 or 5.

But the practicality of number 1's top is probably best.
 
sounds awesome do all that but age like ten bottles so you get sample data you can actually use with confidence.

also bottle 1 is super fresh i would be stoked to have hot auce in something like that.
 
honestly it could depend on your product story and how you want to deliver it. i would say number one or two based on the similar shape of the bottle.

when i look at bottle one and two, i see a 'rough' type of hot sauce. something that gets served in a bbq joint or a country bar. the bottles convey a kind of hot sauce people use in abundance because they like how it spices up their food on a meal to meal basis.

when i see number three i see a sauce that serves as a flavor adder. something that you use to add a little zest to a soup, sauce, or salsa. not necessarily something you use to spice up your morning eggs, etc.

in all honesty though, it depends on what you think. going from a pure i love hot sauce on everything standpoint, i would go for one or two. the bottle share many similarities and you price can be adjusted by size.

if you want, strike up a business model and i can help you out and advise (for some sauce of course, haha :-) ), i too am a business guy, just graduated in 11.
 
With that kind of scale you might look around for an FDA pilot kitchen/culinary incubator for your production - they're set up around the country to help startups with all the paperwork, food safety, etc and provide a commercial kitchen environment for you to work in. Not sure if it's fee based or they take a percentage of your sales but it might be worth looking into.

And for the shelf life your biggest concern will be keeping the pH below 4.6, do that and FDA regs are looser since botulinum will not grow. Your quality shelf life test plan seems pretty good though - there are also private labs that will do it for you if you'd rather just send samples.

feel free to pm me if you have any technical questions - I'm in my fourth year of a Food Science PhD and definitely hope to start my own business someday so it's pretty cool to watch other people getting into it. Good luck to you guys
 
this, plus in my experience with hot sauce the cork would cause a mess with dripping and running down the sides. i vote number 1
 
#1 looks like it has the most functionality to it. Im presuming that metal casing keeps the cork on. The other bottles are really simple, just go with number one.
 
Thanks man I'm definitely going to shoot you a pm, sounds

like an interesting field of study. I

lined up fda nutritional labeling, shelf life testing, and ingredient

listing...est. was $1,065. Not sure if

im getting ripped off. Sounds really

expensive but i have no baseline. Also

most states have weird food cooking rules. To sell you need to cook in a

professional kitchen, ive been looking

around they all run around $200 a shift between 4-8 hours depending on time of

day. One I cook up the first real test back I'll test the PH and that should allow me to figure things out a little better.



Things add up so fast, my estimate is around $7000 to

make my first 500 bottles if that give any people out there thinking about

doing a start up the costs involved---even when doing something small.
 
speaking novelty you should do the bottle number one for the first few years of business, you know seem classy and make it a collectors hotsauce thing, then when production gets big make people remember the old sweet bottle, when you change it like coke, so when things get down change the bottle types and boom people are buying again.
 
If its going to be super artisan (and freakin expensive) go with the long cork bottle. If it is going to be a more affordable, yet still quality product, go with the first one. Those seem to have been all the rage these last few years. Best of luck!
 
# 1

The corks like what #1 has are amazing! There is no cap to get messy, or cork to lose and it keeps it fresh!

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Satans blood (My hottest hot sauce in my collection) has this kind of lid and its always clean and easy to use!

GO WITH #1!!!! You won't be disappointed!!!!





From my experiences with collecting hot sauces, go with #1.
 
number 1 looks the most practical but I like the look of bottle number 3. Corks seem like it could get messy
 
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