Introducing Lucille's Dippin' Sauce!

I spent a long while deciding whether or not to introduce a new product. Let alone one where the main/only ingredient wasn't honey. I want to make sure any new product fits in with my existing products, otherwise it could mean starting a new brand and new product line. I always thought the next product I would be introducing would be a creamed honey. There are other creamed honeys out there, but I want to make exciting flavors that haven't been done before. I have been working out the details for a line of creamed honeys, and hope to have the first one out soon. And then suddenly, honey mustard, an idea that was way out in the distant future was what happened to shoot its way to the front of the pack.

First I started researching to see if there were any small businesses currently making mustard. As luck would have it, there was a lady selling mustards right next to me at the 2023 Point Ruston market. We talked about a collaborative effort with her mixing my Habanero Honey into her mustard. She was at the first market and then never showed up for the rest of the season. So that collaboration was a bust. Looked like I was going to have to make the mustard myself. The only problem was, I had no idea how to make mustard.

What type of mustard did I want to use? I quickly narrowed it down to stone-ground mustard and then started looking for competition that may already be out there. My benchmark was Beaver stone-ground mustard. It's excellent. I love the consistency and the flavor. They do make a Ghost Pepper mustard, but no honey mustard products. I hadn't really seen any other products on the market like the one I wanted to create, so that was a good sign. Unless I can significantly improve an existing product, I don't see the sense in making another one. My other philosophy for food products is they have to taste great. Now that might seem a bit obvious. But when I say great, I mean developing complex flavors and nuances that let your taste buds go on a little journey.

On a night out with friends, we were in the gift shop at McMenamin's Elks Temple in Tacoma. I saw they had a stone-ground mustard with a McMenamin's label on it. On the back it said packaged by Beaver Brands in Oregon. Hmmm.

That started a long conversation with the folks at Beaver Brands about a co-packing venture. For those of you who don't know, co-packing is when a company produces a product and packages it for another company. They put the other company's label on it and it's ready for market. Beaver Brands was willing to help me develop a stone-ground mustard recipe that would be similar to theirs. I thought that was great, I wouldn't have to learn how to make mustard. Leave it to the experts - work smarter, not harder. Perfect. As we got to talking, I started asking about minimum runs and logistics for containers and ingredients. Most of the time, the co-packer will have a minimum amount they have to run to make it worth their time. Sometimes that minimum run can end up being very expensive for a small business like mine. There were a couple other logistical hurdles working with a company in another state, so I couldn't make it work with Beaver Brands. Too bad, because they know how to make really good mustard.

Then comes the end of July 2024. My friend Matt and his brother-in-law Clinton host a Hot Sauce Festival every year on their property - McMillin Farm. Technically their address is in Puyallup, but they are on Hwy 162, the road from Sumner to Orting. Matt has opened up a brewery onsite, and his beers are great. He brews beers to match the season, so you always have a great variety of authentic beers on tap. He recently aged his Diablo Dark in my Batch #10 barrel, and that beer sold out very quickly. But I was talking about the hot sauce festival. Matt is also the owner of a hot sauce company called Avila Gorilla, so he's very much into the hot sauce scene.

His festival has been going for a few years now, getting bigger each year. Make sure you come out and taste for yourself the last weekend in July. At the market, I met a guy named Joseph. Joseph was selling hot sauce for his girlfriend a couple booths down from me. During one of our conversations, he mentioned that he has a co-packing business called Sauceworks that bottled 99% of the vendors who were selling hot sauce there. Hmm, that's interesting. I asked "Joseph, have you ever bottled mustard?" "Yes, a while ago we bottled mustard. Depends on how thick it is." Joseph said. "Well, I want to make a honey mustard" I told him. "Yeah, we can do it." Wasn't that fortuitous?

I had found a co-packer in Tacoma rather than Oregon. Location - check! I set up a meeting with Joseph at his office. He gave me a tour of his operation and then we talked logistics. Although he had mixed mustard in the past, I wouldn't be able to use any of those recipes. They were all intellectual property and couldn't be shared. So I was back to developing my own recipe and making my own mustard. Dang! I pulled several recipes off the old interweb and was experimenting with them. I asked Joseph where he would source black mustard seed. I could find yellow mustard seed, but wasn't having any luck finding black. He suggested a company called S.A. Milligan and called them on his speaker phone. Turns out S.A. Milligan is in a little town called Sumner. The same little town I live in. Ingredient source - check! Things are starting to fall into place.

Although all of my honey is in glass jars with metal lids, I really wanted the honey mustard to be in a squeezable plastic container. Fortunately, my jar supplier Richards Packaging had a plastic bottle in stock that would work perfectly. Container - check!

Now that I knew the dimensions of the bottle, I could go about designing a label. I use Sticker Giant for all my labels. They are able to provide custom shaped labels without any die charge or art setup fee. I highly recommend them.

About this time (around the end of September), I decided to sign up for the Tacoma Holiday Festival - a four day market held in the Tacoma Dome. Over the years, many of my fellow vendors have told me they do really well at this market. My only hesitation was the long days. 9 hours each day, 8 on Sunday can be a pain. Mostly in the feet! I wanted to use the Holiday Market to debut the new dippin' sauce, but I still had a lot of logistics to figure out, including lights and holiday decorations for the booth. Here's a picture of it, I think it came out pretty good.

I got back with Joseph at Sauceworks to figure out production schedule timing and what needed to be done to get this sauce made, bottled and ready for market. One of the first things that needs to be done is to send samples to the lab. We needed acidity and water levels. Since I was planning to use plastic jars, Joseph was concerned about whether or not the product needed to be heated before bottling. Heated product in plastic bottles deforms the bottle when the product cools and creates a vacuum. I would also need a Nutrition Facts label, so that would need to be created before I could send my label design off to Sticker Giant.

The lab Joseph recommended was Vanguard Laboratory in Olympia. I contacted them to see what size sample and paperwork they would need to perform the tests. It was a surprisingly easy process. I let them know I was in a bit of a rush to get the results back, as I was trying to get this sauce produced for the Tacoma Holiday Market at the end of October. They said they should be able to get the test done in a week. I asked them about a Nutrition Label and they said they have another outside company they send that to. I asked them to send me a quote for that service and it ended up being $400. To create a Nutrition Label? I don't know about you, but I'm not about to spend that kind of money on anything unless it's absolutely necessary. I started doing some research online and found Recipal.com. Apparently it was started by a guy who thought paying $200 to get a Nutrition label was ridiculous. Thank god there are like-minded, sensible people out there. If you want to make one label, you can do it for free on their site by adding all your ingredients and quantities. It mocks up the label for you. Very handy. If you need more labels, you can subscribe to their service. If I need to do more in the future, I will definitely subscribe. Now I had all the elements I needed for my label. Off to submit a quick order to Sticker Giant.

The lab results came back the Friday before the THM. Now I had to figure out when I could get on the production schedule at Sauceworks with really only four days left (including Saturday and Sunday). Joseph was great to work with and scheduled a "swing shift" the Tuesday before the THM to mix and bottle the sauce. I don't like to have such a tight schedule for things, but luckily all the stars aligned.

My friend Alex came over to help me bottle and check out the Sauceworks facility. He makes a great line of fermented hot sauces, you should check them out at www.mundayfoods.com/hot-sauce In addition, he has a mobile bartending business. We collaborated on a few cocktails featuring Lucille's Honey at the Roslyn Farmers Market this summer. Which reminds me, I've got to post those recipes. So much to do, so little time.

All in all, it took us three and a half hours to mix, bottle, cap, label and pack the first batch. It came out to 447 bottles. I can't even imagine how long that would have taken me to fill and label by hand. We will make some improvements to the process next go around and hopefully get it running smoothly and efficiently.

Well, the journey is complete and I have a brand new product on the market. Thanks for all the support and encouragement from customers and friends.

As I mentioned before, I won't bring a product to market until I'm 100% satisfied with its taste. The first part of my process involves me dialing in the flavor to my liking. The second part of my process involves getting feedback from a select group of friends who I know have good palates. I also do a bit of sampling at the farmers markets to get direct customer feedback. I know I'm on to something when they are ready to buy it before it's even a packaged product. Depending upon the feedback I receive, I make adjustments to finalize the product. All this gives me a very high confidence that when I finally do bring a product to market, it will be enjoyed by a wide section of customers. I truly hope you will love the taste of Lucille's Habanero Honey Stone-Ground Mustard Dippin' Sauce. And maybe you enjoyed hearing about the journey to get it to you as well.