In fact, they agreed to co-brand the product.  We would enroll in their private label program, which generates many of The Fresh Market’s labeled products, but still carry our name on the bottle as well.  It is such a blessing to have this kind of exposure with such a prestigious store.  We are truly gracious for this great opportunity. (If you’re not familiar with The Fresh Market, I urge you to, at a minimum, visit their site and learn more about them.  Better yet, find a store near you and visit them for the total experience.)

And the news got even better.  As an added bonus from our cutting, we discovered that the Meat and Seafood department was interested in our sauce as their new teriyaki marinade.  This was a development we had not foreseen.  Basically, the butcher department superbly offers marinated meats, like chicken and steak, ready for purchase — for us it could mean chicken breasts and/ or kabobs. This meant we would need to produce the sauce in gallon-size containers in addition to our retail bottle.

So we had to start down a new path of learning how to produce and pack our sauce in gallon-size containers.  While we had toyed with the idea of somehow finding a kitchen and producing the sauce ourselves, it was becoming clear that it was time to find some help.  The next step was to begin looking for a “co-packer”, that is, someone who could take our recipe, mass produce it, and bottle and ship it to our new customer.

Let me tell you, that was quite a process….

I’m not sure there was really an exact “Ah Ha” moment, it just sort of developed as my wife and kids began talking about it.  It may have been my daughter’s teacher relaying to us that she “could drink it straight from the bottle”.  Or it may have been my son’s never-ending quest for ways to make money!

Whatever it was, the idea was developed and we were finally ready to take our recipe to market.

But how?

We contemplated several ideas.  Local fairs, the Farmers Market, barbecue contests, etc.  All seemed like a viable way to get started.  So we first began looking for a bottle.  It was not as easy as we thought.  Having glass bottles shipped to us in NC proved to be a bit costly.

But we finally found one that we could afford and ordered our first 60.  It seemed like a lot.  We thought, “What if we only sell 5 or 10, we’ll be stuck with all these bottles!”  We pressed on.

Next was a label.  We developed an idea around a beautiful Hawaiian quilt and various other items we had purchased in Hawaii on a recent vacation.  We gave a picture and our concept to a graphic artist who forged our first label.  With just some slight revisions, we were ready to print.

Printing on our inkjet printer on some label stock from Staples it looked OK at first.  Until it got damp.  And smeared the ink.  And tore the paper.

But we forged on.

After discussions with several quick print shops, we found a paper and an ink that we were happy with and printed a thousand labels! (We still have a stack of ‘em left)  These labels held up much better and we began selling our sauce.

Next post, our first customer is found!