business Wing Sauce Question

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blitz77

Hi, live in Texas and I have always made a wing sauce that everyone seems to love. In essence its a bottle of Franks Hot Sauce and turns into 2 bottles of Hot sauce. Its the Sauce, stick of butter, various other hot sauces and various spices/seasonings. Not really sure how it would work. I get some answers online that say its possible while others say its not.

Just looking for advice. Planning to make this a little hobby and motivation factor to get me back in the workforce. I am disabled due to my back but would be doing this with my mom and if need be a friend or my gf to help from time to time. I also want to make some salsa and looking into lactofermatation but the wing sauce is something I really enjoy and have gotten the most raved reviews.

Thanks in Advance
 
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You'll need to know the details about selling processed foods in your state and things like labeling requirements. I'll leave it to the sauce experts here to address that.

Using other hot sauces seems like a problem to me. How are you going to handle your ingredients list?

I'm not trying to be a downer - just looking realistically at the issues you might face with regulators, and potentially even the makers of your ingredients.
 
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Welcome to THP!

This thread should answer a lot of your questions.

tutorial - Starting a Food Business 101

Starting a Hot Sauce Business 101- There you are again….at another family gathering and everyone is gobbling up your SuperAwesomeSauce. Last week at the company picnic, it was the same story. Everyone says It’sTheBest! And Everyone says YouShouldSellThis! So you start to think…Why Not...
thehotpepper.com thehotpepper.com

Your wing sauce sounds like the classic Franks Wing sauce that anyone can easily make for a couple bucks and a stick of butter. That might be a hard sell given most small batch sauces sell for $7 per 5oz bottle.

Can you go back to basics and try to formulate your own recipe? This may seem beyond your comfort level, but believe me that there are hundreds of sauce makers that didnt start out as sauce makers.

Sauces with dairy or meat are strictly regulated, a lot more than basic vinegar based sauce. They can absolutely be done, licensed, inspected, approved, etc. It can be more daunting for people who are not familiar with food service or food processing.

Hope the info helps. Again, it can be done. You have to be your own best motivator. You have to believe.... and have a really great unique product.

Good luck and Have Fun!
SL
 
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I had read that food questions post but still had questions. My cottage laws allow some freedom. I do use frank red sauce but then add 6 more sauces, some spices and seasonings into the blend.

I did figure that I would have to start by scratch and research the approximate blends of each sauce and finally Franks sauce. I was just hoping that I could cheat the process by speeding things up so that I can just focus on the lacto fermented salsita versus the wing sauce. But thats fine, just going to need to do more research and plan everything out.

Trying to find a good answer but havent been able to get a concrete answer but it seems like its a no. Just wanted to check if I can add avocado to my salsa blend for the lacto fermented process before canning/bottling.
 
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HellfireFarm said:
Using other hot sauces seems like a problem to me. How are you going to handle your ingredients list?
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It's done all the time. You can actually spot Frank's in some other hot sauce products by reading the parenthetical ingredients. Let me give you another example. If you make BBQ sauce you may start with a ketchup base, and you may use Heinz. This is perfectly fine. Ingredients sometimes have name brands, and sometimes they don't. When I have seen hot sauces in other hot sauce it usually says "Aged pepper sauce," and by the parenthetical ingredients, you can figure out which brand it is. What you have to make sure you are doing is transformative. And Louisiana-style hot sauce makes a good base just like ketchup does, so in most cases, it will be transformative since they are simple. Some people simply use it as an ingredient and not the base.
 
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However adding "6 more sauces" lol yeah, that sounds like a mess of a label and a sauce for friends at home and nothing commercial. I can see using a base but not just mixing a bunch of commercial products and calling it a sauce. I'd also suggest tinkering to come up with your own. Best of luck!
 
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Yeah they have wanted me to sell on side but the end goal is create a sauce once I have time/healthy enough.

Thank you all for the point of view and knowledge. I will work on figuring everything as I can see. Just need to check how certain ingredients will work in a bottle after being fermented. Especially garlic since I dont want anyone to get botulism.
 
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The Hot Pepper said:
It's done all the time. You can actually spot Frank's in some other hot sauce products by reading the parenthetical ingredients. Let me give you another example. If you make BBQ sauce you may start with a ketchup base, and you may use Heinz. This is perfectly fine. Ingredients sometimes have name brands, and sometimes they don't. When I have seen hot sauces in other hot sauce it usually says "Aged pepper sauce," and by the parenthetical ingredients, you can figure out which brand it is. What you have to make sure you are doing is transformative. And Louisiana-style hot sauce makes a good base just like ketchup does, so in most cases, it will be transformative since they are simple. Some people simply use it as an ingredient and not the base.
Click to expand...
Interesting, I was not at all aware of that. Thanks for informing me!
 
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The Hot Pepper said:
It's done all the time. You can actually spot Frank's in some other hot sauce products by reading the parenthetical ingredients. Let me give you another example. If you make BBQ sauce you may start with a ketchup base, and you may use Heinz. This is perfectly fine. Ingredients sometimes have name brands, and sometimes they don't. When I have seen hot sauces in other hot sauce it usually says "Aged pepper sauce," and by the parenthetical ingredients, you can figure out which brand it is. What you have to make sure you are doing is transformative. And Louisiana-style hot sauce makes a good base just like ketchup does, so in most cases, it will be transformative since they are simple. Some people simply use it as an ingredient and not the base.
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Thank you so much. I read a small snippet of that in other sources but they werent many and werent fully confident. I am planning to make a new batch in a week. Will get the numbers to see what the ratio's actually are to see if it could qualify. Then to see what sauces I could either eliminate and/or recreate in my own way to lessen the label issue. Since the main reason for the other sauces is snagging certain flavor profiles. I could probably make a sauce that incorporates most of the flavor profiles of the other sauces. 🤔

When tasting it you dont really taste Franks Red hot. If I did a blind taste test it wouldnt come out.
 
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If you dont do this already, start transitioning all your ingredients to grams.

For this next test batch, if you use 1/2 cup Franks, measure out the 1/2 cup Franks then weigh that amount. You should measure around 112 grams.

When scaling up, larger measuring cups will vary liquid amounts, sometimes to a significant amount that could mess up the recipe. By measuring everything in grams, including liquids, that will keep things consistant.
 
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salsalady said:
If you dont do this already, start transitioning all your ingredients to grams.

For this next test batch, if you use 1/2 cup Franks, measure out the 1/2 cup Franks then weigh that amount. You should measure around 112 grams.

When scaling up, larger measuring cups will vary liquid amounts, sometimes to a significant amount that could mess up the recipe. By measuring everything in grams, including liquids, that will keep things consistant.
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Yes, thank you I had seen it on one of the sticky posts plus my best friend wants everything in grams since he doesnt do well with seasoning by taste. He wanted a few of my food recipes to make for his family.

But yes, thanks for the reminder. I will keep that in mind especially so that I can study the ingredients to try and make a sauce to combine with Franks. Most of the other sauces I use are Mexican brands.
 
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HellfireFarm said:
Interesting, I was not at all aware of that. Thanks for informing me!
Click to expand...
Here's an example of Frank's as the base of another hot sauce.

Screenshot_20240315-125202.png
 
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