Hot sauce with your shop’s name, ready for the shelf

Gift shops and boutiques, general stores and mercantiles, specialty food shops, museum and park gift shops, hardware and feed stores with a gift aisle, and coffee shops with a retail wall. Anywhere people come in looking for something local to take home or give away.

Customers can buy a national hot sauce brand anywhere. They can only buy yours from you. A label with your shop’s name, the town, the trail that starts across the street or the shop dog makes the bottle a souvenir as well as a condiment, and it keeps selling your shop after it leaves the store.

It also gives you a product to build a gift bundle around: a bottle with local snacks, a mug or a cookbook, at a price you set.

Packaged food sold in stores needs certain information on the label. What each bottle carries, and who takes care of it:

• Product name with a descriptor such as “Hot Sauce”, on the front. You design it; the Studio won’t let you order without the descriptor.
• Net contents on the front: 5.0 FL. OZ. (148mL), a fixed line the Studio places for you.
• Ingredients, including allergens. Printed on the right-hand panel at bottling.
• Nutrition Facts. Also on that panel, so you don’t need the FDA’s small-business nutrition labeling exemption, which is for products sold without a Nutrition Facts panel.
• The name and place of business of the manufacturer, packer or distributor (21 CFR 101.5), with a lot code. Added on the same panel.
• A UPC barcode, if your point of sale or a distributor needs one. That one is yours: see below.

If you scan items at checkout, buy a GTIN (the number behind a UPC barcode) from GS1 US, which sells single GTINs as well as company prefixes; check its current pricing. Generate the barcode image, upload it to the back panel as a PNG at 300 pixels per inch or more, and scan the printed bottle before you put the rest on the shelf.

Stores that only sell through their own register can skip barcodes and key the item in by hand.

Shops order at wholesale prices with a wholesale quote: send the label, flavor and quantity, and we reply with wholesale pricing and an invoice. At the 48-bottle minimum a bottle costs $6.81 delivered, shipping included; at 96 it’s $6.47. At a shelf price of $12.99, that is a 48% margin on your first order and 50% at 96. The margin calculator on this page runs your own numbers.

Keystone pricing (double your cost) would put the bottle at about $13.62. A local, exclusive product is easier to sell at full price than a brand shoppers can compare online.

Start with one flavor that suits the most customers: Cajun Cayenne (Heat 2/5) is savory and a crowd-pleaser, and Mango Pineapple (Heat 2/5) makes an easy sweet-heat gift. Keep a few bottles by the register as well as on the shelf, and add a small card with the heat level and two foods to put it on.

Want to offer tastings? Check your local health department’s rules for sampling first. If the shop sells grilling gear, a 12 oz BBQ sauce or honey mustard sits naturally next to it.

Add the sauce to your store as you would any product: the Studio’s 3D bottle preview shows the label as it will look, and your wholesale invoice has the cost per bottle for your records.

Every bottle in a batch is the same sauce and label, and each new flavor or design starts at the 48-bottle minimum. Reorders come in cases of 24 from the same design and usually arrive two to four weeks after you order, so reorder when you’re down to your last case. Custom-labeled bottles can’t be returned, which is why we suggest starting with one flavor at the minimum.