From 1994-1998 I used a licensed commercial kitchen owned by a salad dressing maker in western Washington for making and selling our local fresh salsa. Dec1998, we moved to the other side of WA state. 1999- I took the year off.
2000- I got
back in the kitchen making fresh salsa out of a local shared use community kitchen that was put together using grants and such (before my time).
2001- srarted working on bottled sauce recipes.
worked out of the shared use kitchen for 3-4 years until it closed.
At that point- we had the cash money to fork out for a commercial kitchen, and a business commitment from a business unrelated to hot sauces but kitchen related that needed our services for at least 2 summers....so we took a portion of an existing building on our property and made it into a commercial kitchen including putting in a septic system.
Currently, I think I'm one of a very few small batch sauce makers that actually has their own processing facility. LuckyDog is one of a very few who are working full-time in the hot sauce industry as their full time business and source of income.
A lot of people have used co-packers for years, and their sauces/businesses are still 'side-line' businesses. Some use co-packers even when they are full time sauce slingers. A few, like me, have their own processing facility, but are not full time sauce sales people. Even fewer have processing facilities and are full time in the food biz.
Does that help confuse the issue?
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