Hot packing sauce in plastic squeeze bottles

Hellraising Hot Sauce

Hellraising Hot Sauce

Question for the group:
 
Many of us use the squeeze bottles for demos and tastings, but I'm starting to see a few local producers selling their sauce in these same bottles. I suppose it's doable with high density polyethylene that can handle the hot packing temps, but I don't think that's what I am seeing. I recently saw a local hot sauce (that is made in a community/commercial kitchen) in a restaurant in glass bottles AND plastic squeeze bottles that looked like the kind you could get at the Dollar Store.
 
Something doesn't seem quite right -- wouldn't the FDA have all sorts of extra rules and regulations for this type of packaging in order to permit retail/wholesale sales?
 
 
 
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we had this discussion a while back, I'll see if I can find it-
 
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Maybe they just dumped the hot sauce into a squeeze bottle with a label for serving on the table, just like ketchup or mustard. I know some, like Fat Cats, are packaging some of their sauces in plastic bottles. No preservatives either so it was not cold packed.
 
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Here's a good post from HotMaple-
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/51572-plastic-bottling/?hl=%2Bbottling+%2Bin+%2Bplastic
 
 
 
and a couple others-
 
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/39613-bottling-in-plastic/?hl=%2Bplastic+%2Bbottles#entry833991
 
 
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/35174-hot-packing-in-plastic/?hl=%2Bplastic+%2Bbottles#entry716531

I'd be interested to know more about that local saauce.  They may be packaging it in plastic without authorization.  I don't know about FDA regs for plastic as I've never looked into it.
 
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Thanks SL, I knew I had seen some stuff on here about plastic before. I see the appeal of plastic bottles -- it would be great to have a restaurant use your sauce as their "house sauce" and just refill the bottles -- but I always figured it was too much of a pain in the butt to deal with. I found the FDA and local state rules for 5-oz. bottles and labels to be sufficiently frustrating!
 
It's just another case of seeing something and wondering "hmmmm ... how are they getting away with that?"
 
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Lucky Dog Hot Sauce said:
I use squeeze bottles at festivals. Perfect pour every time.

But I don't package in it. I may make the switch to 10 oz plastic at some point. My customers have been demanding larger bottle sizes for a while.
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For your sauces I can see a squeeze bottle being perfect in FM sample situations (and on a line in a kitchen).  I wonder why you'd consider 10oz plastic though, from an esthetic point of view I generally think plastic is cheap and as a parent w young kids I'm all freaked out about PBAs.  Is the price difference really that much between a 10oz plastic versus 10oz glass?  
 
Thinking on it I can probably answer my own question, especially when shipping is added.  
 
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Shipping is a big factor, especially when shipping cases to distributors and out of area hot sauce stores.
 
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SmokenFire said:
 
For your sauces I can see a squeeze bottle being perfect in FM sample situations (and on a line in a kitchen).  I wonder why you'd consider 10oz plastic though, from an esthetic point of view I generally think plastic is cheap and as a parent w young kids I'm all freaked out about PBAs.  Is the price difference really that much between a 10oz plastic versus 10oz glass?  
 
Thinking on it I can probably answer my own question, especially when shipping is added.  
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Yep - glass is heavy. 
 
One other reason I would resist the switch is that grocery stores are set up for 5 oz woozie containers. Whole Foods sheves are about 1/2 inch taller than my 5 oz bottles. It's the "hot sauce section". 
 
10 oz glass or squeeze bottle is much taller. And as such won't fit on those shelves.  One generally does not say to Whole Foods, "hey, I have a taller bottle, you need to reconfigure your shelves for my products!" - yeah, that wouldn't get me very far. 
 
That's been the #1 reason for not making the change to date. Again - it's something I'd consider doing, but I've also been expanding to more retail locations, and the standard is 5 oz woozie. Even those cool medicine bottles aren't great, because they're as wide as 2 woozies, which grocery stores hate. They want 2 SKUs in that space, not 1. Real estate is everything when it comes to shelf space in a commercial location. 
 
For hot sauce shops it's not that big a deal - they configure their shelves however they please.  And some grocers will have the large and small bottles of Tabasco / Tapatio / Cholula - but certainly not all of them. 
 
I dunno - I tend to go with whatever is most likely to get me on the shelf, and that's the 5 oz woozie. 
 
If I do go to a 10 oz size, it'd likely be in addition to the 5 oz. That means doubling my production, doubling my inventory, doubling my carrying costs. Food for thought. 

I see new companies wanting to use "cool" or "unusual" or "interesting" bottle shapes and sizes - and hey, I like those things too. I also would like to be as unique as possible. 
 
But you tend to have a choice in a well established industry like "grocery" - you can be uniform and get on the shelves, or you can be cool, unusual and unique/interesting and not get on the shelves.  Sometimes conforming is a good thing for a business. 
 
All depends on one's goals of course. 

So I try to make what's in my boring bottle as unique as possible. 
;)
 
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Makes perfect sense.  Plus if you look at Cholula and Tobasco, etc they do indeed have uniquely shaped bottles, but everyone of them conforms to a standard 5oz woozy height and width.
 
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SmokenFire said:
Makes perfect sense.  Plus if you look at Cholula and Tobasco, etc they do indeed have uniquely shaped bottles, but everyone of them conforms to a standard 5oz woozy height and width.
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And they're large enough companies to afford to make two lines of product, small & large bottles. If a store won't stock their large bottles it's no sweat for them.
 
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Lucky Dog Hot Sauce said:
I use squeeze bottles at festivals. Perfect pour every time.

But I don't package in it. I may make the switch to 10 oz plastic at some point. My customers have been demanding larger bottle sizes for a while.
Click to expand...
 
I looked into 5oz PET woozy bottles so I can sell them on Amazon again, since they blocked glass bottles over 4oz now.  Endorphin Farms indicated that I would have to reformulate Cinder (and Stoke) to be shelf stable in a PET bottle... plus a new PA letter.
 
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