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The trials and tribulations of trying to have your barbecue sauce bottled or, a funny thing happened on the way to bottling our sauce. Before we start our little trip down bottling sauce lane, please remember that while the tale is true, we reserve the right to brag about our sauce and any other condiment we concoct. Now, on with the story….. As with all of our fellow barbecue enthusiast, we believe that our barbecue sauce should be on store shelves everywhere as it is the best thing since sliced bread. As a matter of fact it should be the only barbecue sauce sold in our local grocery store, Wal-Mart, and grocery chains from Texas to New York City (reminds me of a salsa commercial), and as we tell people at the competitions we attend, it will make the other guys barbecue brisket or ribs taste good! (all in good fun of course!) Anyway, we decided to find out what we could about the nuances of bottling barbecue sauce. Reading comments on barbecue bulletin boards and Internet forums, the general consensus is that the sauce business is saturated and you are crazy to try to get into this business. We quickly ruled out these comments by convincing ourselves that they were being made by people that already had commercial products and did not want any more competition. Our gut feeling was that they knew our sauce would kick butt, and they did not want to go head to head with us in taste and quality (confident aren’t we). Trudging along, we made up some sauce and sent it off to the Texas A&M University and a Fort Worth food lab to be tested for shelf life. After about five weeks, the results came in with exceptional marks. We were ready to start bottling! The first thing we discovered about bottling sauce is that the State of Texas does not allow commercial cooking in any kitchen that is primarily used for personal food preparation. It is quite alright to build a separate kitchen and use it, but not your home kitchen (we have since learned that many states have this requirement). Well, as all of the guys on the cooking team are broke, this is not an option, even though we kicked around the idea of putting a portable building in someone’s back yard with a sink connected to a garden hose, and a propane tank to fuel the stove, but our wives quickly put a stop to that (something about not wanting those crazy cooking team members anywhere near their house). Our next idea was to rent a kitchen such as a community center or something similar. A quick check with the State of Texas and we were informed that this was ok as long as the kitchen had a posted health inspection and once that was done we needed a food manufacturing license ($60 to get this). Alright, we had an idea!! After making a few calls in our area of East Texas (I won’t name any cities just in case we end up in a competition or opening a business there), we found several places that would rent their kitchen to us. Grins and smiles from all on the team, we were making progress. Whoa, wait a minute, the local health inspector has to issue an inspection for us to make commercial product in these kitchens, and as far as he is concerned if we don’t have the capitol to finance our own place, he is not going to allow us to rent a kitchen in his domain. We even informed him that one of our team members had taken and passed the Food Safety Managers course, a requirement in Texas if you want to sell food product at local fairs or arts and craft events. His response to that is “anybody can pass that test, it doesn’t make a difference”. Another call to the State of Texas and guess what, the health inspector of an area has final say as long as his or her requirements meet those mandated by the state. Back to square one. click to continue... |
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