Are there any concise federal guideline documents or is it really entirely up to your process authority?
Tomorrow I go to take a certification class/exams to start working on a food processor license, mostly in hopes of getting some of my questions answered during class.
I've attempted to ask questions of various officials regarding the viability of doing hot sauce production on a small scale legally. I know from everything I've read, a commericial kitchen, standard food saftey regarding contaminants, making sure your PH is below 4.0 and hot filling at 180+ seems fairly standard. I know I need to submit a recipe for approval, samples for PH testing and may or may not have to submit samples for lab testing and/or nutritional information testing. Submitting a recipe that contains 'unusual ingredients' such as pinapple and mango, not to mention the exotic peppers that don't show up in their standard database seems to be a trigger for requiring submitting 2 different test lots for all the lab tests. Unfortunately it seems to me to be somewhat arbitrary, as there is no overall documentation of the requirements. It certainly makes the idea of making a 5 gallon batch of something just to see what people think of it an expensive process.
The answer I got on my questions about drying and smoking peppers and making powders was that they couldn't even tell me who to talk to.
I talked to a restaurant owner yesterday who said they'd started down the road of getting some of their sauces made in the restaurant available in the local grocery stores. They figured it would be straightforward, as they were obviously already making stuff for sale to the public out of an inspected facility already, just not for retail sale. They ended up giving up and using a co-packer to produce their private label sauces in another state because it was such a hassle. And this was just for tomato based pasta sauces. Unfortunately the only copacker operation I've found who will even work on small lot sizes considers a small lot a 150 gallon batch and was less than enthusastic about using ingredients (such as exotic peppers) that they couldn't just order up from a wholesale supplier.
I recently read "A Trip to the Beach" a book about the owners of Blanchard's restaurant in Anguilla. In there they told the story of how they started the Blanchards & Blanchards sauce and dressing company in their apartment and were already selling to high end retailers and specialty shops by the time they moved to a real production facility. I'm thinking a lot of the sauce companies out there have to start this way or close, as there doesn't seem to be an effective legal way of starting with small lot sauces.
Tomorrow I go to take a certification class/exams to start working on a food processor license, mostly in hopes of getting some of my questions answered during class.
I've attempted to ask questions of various officials regarding the viability of doing hot sauce production on a small scale legally. I know from everything I've read, a commericial kitchen, standard food saftey regarding contaminants, making sure your PH is below 4.0 and hot filling at 180+ seems fairly standard. I know I need to submit a recipe for approval, samples for PH testing and may or may not have to submit samples for lab testing and/or nutritional information testing. Submitting a recipe that contains 'unusual ingredients' such as pinapple and mango, not to mention the exotic peppers that don't show up in their standard database seems to be a trigger for requiring submitting 2 different test lots for all the lab tests. Unfortunately it seems to me to be somewhat arbitrary, as there is no overall documentation of the requirements. It certainly makes the idea of making a 5 gallon batch of something just to see what people think of it an expensive process.
The answer I got on my questions about drying and smoking peppers and making powders was that they couldn't even tell me who to talk to.
I talked to a restaurant owner yesterday who said they'd started down the road of getting some of their sauces made in the restaurant available in the local grocery stores. They figured it would be straightforward, as they were obviously already making stuff for sale to the public out of an inspected facility already, just not for retail sale. They ended up giving up and using a co-packer to produce their private label sauces in another state because it was such a hassle. And this was just for tomato based pasta sauces. Unfortunately the only copacker operation I've found who will even work on small lot sizes considers a small lot a 150 gallon batch and was less than enthusastic about using ingredients (such as exotic peppers) that they couldn't just order up from a wholesale supplier.
I recently read "A Trip to the Beach" a book about the owners of Blanchard's restaurant in Anguilla. In there they told the story of how they started the Blanchards & Blanchards sauce and dressing company in their apartment and were already selling to high end retailers and specialty shops by the time they moved to a real production facility. I'm thinking a lot of the sauce companies out there have to start this way or close, as there doesn't seem to be an effective legal way of starting with small lot sauces.