Jobs in the heat world

I have wondered what types of career fields in the hot pepper world there are.  Is it a big enough industry, or is it mainly small business run by friends & families?  Seems like it would be an emerging market, like medical marijuana.  In Colorado the MJ industry created a lot of jobs, and opened new career paths in growing, cultivating, and marketing. Wondering if we will see something similar in the pepper world.
 
Or maybe I am off the mark, and just have not really seen it yet. Any opinions?  What will the next 10 years look like in the hot pepper world?
 
For myself I would love nothing more than operating a business of growing and selling peppers, spices, and sauces. The start up capital for the size is lacking. Would definitely work for an experienced person to learn from. 

I would imagine traveling salesman might be out there. Someone needs to go and hawk all the goods to restaurants and stores.

You are across the state line from me hot stuff. What part of Missouri are you in? I need to get down to southern MO for a float trip this year. Those spring fed rivers are amazing.

I'm in the Beautiful Lake of the Ozarks. Lots of rivers that people canoe and float on around here.

yeah biggest $ is with large volume repeat customers aka restaurants / markets.

if you can create something unique and have everything setup for a good PR blitz you could do it like puckerbutt. Otherwise yeah just small business. marketing / capital is the hard part.

Its less like weed. More like microbreweries.
There are the big established guys (tabasco, cholula, franks, Bonnie, Monsanto aka Budweiser,Coors,etc) then lots of small companies doing smaller runs / visiting local markets.

juanitos said:

Its less like weed. More like microbreweries.
There are the big established guys (tabasco, cholula, franks, Bonnie, Monsanto aka Budweiser,Coors,etc) then lots of small companies doing smaller runs / visiting local markets.

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So true. The big guys dominate the industry, but there are plenty of small hot sauce/salsa companies that are just as good, if not better. It would be cool if there were more jobs in the pepper/hot sauce/salsa industry.

If money is important, unless you work for a big operation, growing peppers yourself, I think is the way to go. If you get the word out to enough people that you have peppers, you are only limited to how many plants you grow.
If you sell the peppers retail, and started in a small greenhouse, you can make $100 a plant in a full year. You want to make $20000, grow out 200 good producing plants. You want to make $40k, grow 400 plants, etc. Growing them outside with a short producing window and your numbers will be much lower.
If you are an internet marketing genius, put together a seed business. If you could sell every seed you could produce, you could bring in 100k just growing a dozen good sized plants. I see the seed business is very lacking of quality people selling quality seeds, or for that matter, most places sell seeds that aren't even the right thing. Sure, we know people like Judy that has good stuff, but can we count more than the people you can count on one hand?

From what I can tell from my research, while you can make a living growing peppers, the real money is in pepper products.