I have to agree with SmokenFire's response.
Hot sauce producers easily go through pounds of pods at a time - and that's even the smallest of them. Over on Twitter I've slowly been building up a following mostly just by posting my progress in learning & growing and posting plenty of photos and along the way I've had several different hot sauce makers contact me from different parts of Canada. I've communicated back and forth especially with one fellow here in Nova Scotia who's provided me with some good advice on greenhouses & the like along the way and were we to live closer he'd probably be one of my first clients since he said he sometimes doesn't manage to grow enough to fulfill his needs.
And then there is the farmer's markets, as SmokenFire mentioned. In a setting like that you could probably easily sell fresh peppers - whether they're mild, hot or even super hot there's bound to be people looking or willing to give them a shot. And those types of markets often result in repeat customers once they're hooked and know that that's a place where they'll be able to easily find you. Unfortunately for me, unless I somehow manage to upgrade to producing year round, I'm not really eligible for the Farmer's Market in my county because they expect enough product to fill a table each and every weekend of the market which spans from the Spring and into the Fall... With the way peppers grow up here it isn't until mid-to-late Summer and into the Fall that I start seeing any really substantial results.
For me, ideally, I'd like to be reach the point of having commercial/industrial size greenhouses structured to function year round, utilizing clean energy (i.e. wind for power and solar for heat) and then outside focus my efforts towards a range of produce - mild peppers, carrots, turnips, tomatoes, tomatilos, lettuce, etc. It'd be nice to do it this way so that peppers would be the focus & fuel of my business and the rest could be a supplement that would also allow me to have my own personal supply of produce -and- to help out those in need.
And I also agree with Smoken' sentiment on how to go about deciding on what varieties to grow.. This year I made initial decision to aim towards having a variety of colours in my mix, while still focusing towards "super hots" (after all - look at my name lol). As the year progressed I ended up broadening my horizons to includes C. Galapagoense, a couple Baccatum's, and some other mild-to-hot varieties (i.e. Habanero, Hungarian Wax, Hot Lemon, Time Bomb, etc) as I received seeds from some people and bought seedlings from local garden centers & other places... I've ended up with a nearly equal mix of mild and super hot varieties and I've gotten requests (i.e. from the bar I sold the White Ghosts too) to look at growing Bell's & the like in the future.
