So you have a recipe you want to sell…

Since we’ve had Hot Squeeze bottled, many people have asked us how to go about getting their famous pickle recipe, or their mother’s fudge or their family’s bbq sauce bottled and on the market. We’re more than happy to tell you how we went about doing it, but let me tell you, the reason that everyone doesn’t actually get their pickles pickled is that it isn’t easy!

We were lucky with Hot Squeeze because in alot of ways we went about it backwards. Hot Squeeze started out as a glaze over a pork tenderloin that we served while catering a lunch. Because we had a captive audience (our catering clientele) we were able to test our sauce on a large audience over a number of years. This is a very important part of the process. As I say, we were lucky, for years Hot Squeeze was served at every lunch we served. We got to hear how much everyone loved it and we watched as they poured it on everything.

So my first suggestion for anyone out there that really is thinking of bringing a product to market is to check out the competition. Go to a food show (besides, they’re great fun and you get to sample everything!!) but what you’ll find at these shows is that there are lots and lots of other people out there with delicious pickles and fudge. The competition is huge and there are alot more people out there that have a lot more money and time and energy and connections to help them.

OK, your pickles are still better than anything else you tasted? Now you need to find someone to package it, someone to do a label design, you need to get a nutritional analysis and then you need to purchase UPC codes and then you have to find a market. This again takes time and money.

This part of the process for us took almost a full year and as I say, we were lucky. We had a fabulous mentor, Leon Stoltz, the owner and creator of PotatoFinger Potato Chips. His wife, and friend, Lainie helped me design the label. We had a bottler who held our hand through alot of it. And still, there were moments that I thought I would scream (like when I was told that I had to find a rabbi to bless our chipotle peppers!)

So it takes all of these steps and more just to get it into a package! But when Carol and I were at our bottling plant for our first run of Hot Squeeze and saw that first bottle come down the line, it felt like we were being handed a brand new baby. When we saw the hundreds and hundreds of bottles that followed it going into the cases we thought, now what do we do!!

So stick with us, we’ll take you along for our ride, we’ll tell you what we learn along the way and we’ll try to pass on our knowledge. We’ll let you know about the places we go and the people we meet as we try to get Hot Squeeze to be a household name! We were lucky that we had the guidance to get us to where we are today and we want to pass it on - I figure there’s plenty of room out there for all of us!

Oh and by the way, one of the things that keeps us going is when we hear from you, so keep the encouraging words and your stories of Hot Squeeze addiction coming!!

Sue and Carol