How To Sell Hot Sauce Online

Are you trying to get your homemade hot sauce bottled, packaged, and available for sale online?

Homemade hot sauce can be sold online if you reside in a state that allows it to be sold under their cottage food law and there are not any stipulations within the law that don’t allow online transactions. A commercially manufactured hot sauce can be sold online if the facility where the sauce is made is registered with the FDA but, this can be much costlier than a homemade operation. Private Label and Co-Packing are other manufacturing options that allow a hot sauce to be sold online.

Hot sauce has become one of the trendiest condiments to consume, make and sell. Consumers are willing to try the next best-flavored sauce through different tolerance levels and this has triggered new entrepreneurs to want to enter the business to satisfy this demand. Selling hot sauce online is one of the easiest ways to enter the business but there are some other ways to check out here. Not every method of entering the hot sauce business involves a great recipe…but it helps knowing what it’s made with.

I probably mention in every blog post how hot sauce is made; hot peppers in some form to create the spicey pungency and a type of liquid-based substance to help it liquify and become a sauce. Add a couple of other ingredients and you will have a unique hot sauce flavor. It’s a natural reaction to want to share it with someone or take it to the next level with sales.  

Can you sell homemade hot sauce online?

Yes, you can sell hot sauce online but there are several practices to follow to ensure that the sauce is legally produced and sold. It can be approached like other consumable or edible products but there are a few things that can be avoided or “loopholes” in which your homemade hot sauce can be sold.

1] You can sell hot sauce online if…a homemade hot sauce is approved as a “shelf stable” food within the state, or county you are making the sauce.

2] You can sell hot sauce online if…you make a homemade hot sauce in a facility that is registered with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

3] You can sell hot sauce online if…someone else makes the hot sauce, either using their recipe or yours.

Many products are sold online, and this is true of hundreds of brands of hot sauce as well. However, many people who start a hot sauce business may want to sell their homemade hot sauce online because it is easier, a quicker startup, and much less expensive than a commercially manufactured sauce that needs to be sold at a physical location or on store shelves.

Selling a sauce that you have made yourself will follow two practices. Either you live in a state that allows homemade hot sauce to be sold online as an acidified food (not all of them do) OR you follow US Federal Food and Drug Administration requirements and make a hot sauce that can be sold anywhere. Do you live in a state that allows an acidified hot sauce to be sold under their cottage food law?

States that allow homemade hot sauce sales online through cottage food laws

Either you live in a state that allows homemade hot sauce to be sold online (not all of them do) OR you follow US Federal Food and Drug Administration requirements

Every state has rules regulating the manufacture and sale of homemade foods and this can vary significantly from state to state and even counties or jurisdictions within the state. These are known as Cottage Food Laws and just about every state has one that will approve or not approve the sale of homemade hot sauce online. Check out this site from the Institute for Justice that breaks down each state’s cottage food law.

About half of the states in the US allow acidified foods or foods with a shelf-stable ph level to be sold under their cottage food law. If a hot sauce is acidified with a pH of 4.6 or below it could qualify as a food that can be sold under cottage food laws, but many states do not clearly define hot sauce products as being approved or not. Read more on Why the pH of Hot Sauce is Important.

This is largely due to the many ways hot sauce can be made through acidification and preservation methods or whether they would need pasteurization or refrigeration. In addition, some states that allow homemade hot sauce to be sold through their cottage food laws don’t allow online sales of the product, so it is important to know the details of your state’s cottage food law.

Know your states Cottage food law

A hot sauce needs to be approved under the state’s cottage food law to be sold to consumers through online methods and even then, some states may have other restrictions. Cottage Food Laws or Home Processing Licensing can often have a sales cap on the amount of money that can be earned from sales online or otherwise. This means sales are limited to a certain amount each year whether you sell online or not.

In addition, a state like Texas and South Dakota allows online orders, but the product needs to be delivered in person. Some states such as Maryland will have separate cottage food laws that pertain to on-farm home processing. Click here for an overview of cottage laws in every state.

States needing to follow Food and Drug Administration regulations

States that do not allow hot sauce to be sold under their cottage food laws whether it is acidified or not will have to follow the FDA regulations for commercial manufacturing to sell hot sauce online. If your manufacturing facility has passed FDA inspections then you can sell your hot sauce anywhere, not just online.

The FDA does not inspect home kitchens, but that would be done on the state level if their cottage food laws allow hot sauce to be made in a home kitchen and sold online. Click here to register your facility with the FDA or go here for their registration guide. Registering with the FDA may be time-consuming and tedious if you don’t know where to start. However, there are a few methods to sell hot sauce online that avoid county, state, or health regulations.

How to sell hot sauce online

Private Label and Co-Packing provide an opportunity to sell hot sauce online using a product made in an approved or registered facility without needing to apply for licenses yourself. A Private Label or Co-Packing facility already has been inspected and registered with the FDA and therefore if your sauce is produced in their facility, you can sell it online. However, only a Co-Packer would be making your unique recipe, a Private Label manufacturer has their own sauce recipes that you usually cannot alter.

How to sell someone else’s hot sauce online

Another option to sell hot sauce online is to sell someone else’s sauce under your label, known as a Private Label.  This is a legitimate and legal way to sell hot sauce if you have an agreement with the Private Label manufacturer to sell their recipes in your branded bottle. Private Label is a quick and effective way to enter the hot sauce business to focus on the marketing, promoting, and sales portion of business. Click this link for some of the top Co-Packers to work with for an online hot sauce business.

Private Label online hot sauce sales

Selling hot sauce online under a Private Label contract can allow you to focus on the sales aspect of selling and not the need to be making hot sauce in a kitchen. Private label also allows you to put your branding, image, or logo on a bottle of hot sauce. If you have a logo, brand, image, or trademark, selling Private Label hot sauce can support promotions behind your brand.

Drop Shipping online hot sauce sales

Drop shipping hot sauce is not the most common method for selling hot sauce online. This method of selling hot sauce online gives you access to major brands of hot sauce that are stored for you and shipped out when you make a sale off your website. Shipping costs may or may not be included as well as the promotional and marketing costs needed to make a sale. Check out Hot Shots Drop Shipping where you can start a hot sauce business online…today!

Cost to sell hot sauce online

The costs for an online hot sauce business can be broken down into the basics; hot sauce and a web page. The Rule of Essentials would require some form of hot sauce as a physical product. After all, you are not selling a service….you are selling a product. I discuss the Rule of Essentials and break down the basic necessities of what is needed to start business in How To Start a Hot Sauce Business.

The hot sauce can come in the form of a Private Label, Co-Packer, or Bottling Your Own if your home state allows it under their cottage law. The cost of the product, if broken down into single bottles doesn’t vary too much but the costs of startup otherwise varies significantly. Learn much more about Bottling Your Own hot sauce in my latest version of How To Start A Hot Sauce Business available as a paperback on Amazon.

Website costs

The costs for an online store front through a website are minimal compared to other physical storefront costs. A host can provide an online store set up for about $60.00 a year or about $5.00 a month. This is the least expensive platform for selling hot sauce unless you have a location where you can sell for free, Some of the more popular websites to set up a store front are Wix and Shopify.

Social media is great for promoting your online hot sauce store but having a store front gives a professional appearance that attracts shoppers. However, social media can be used to bring traffic to a site because traffic equals sales.

Additional costs on the website may be a plug-in for point-of-sale transactions, at the very least. Many plug-ins can be obtained for free but a fully automated system may have additional fees. However, this could free up time and efforts to make additional sales and allow for a continued operation.

Other costs involved with selling hot sauce online

Marketing and promoting are huge necessities if you are trying to sell anything online. Having a hot sauce listed on a webpage or blog that doesn’t get any traffic also doesn’t get any sales. After your online store front is set up it will be necessary to spend money on promoting your hot sauce and getting traffic to land at your store. Marketing a hot sauce is as important as making it but we can help with that too. Check out Top Hot Sauce Marketing Must Have Strategies.

What you need to sell hot sauce online

Selling hot sauce online needs a physical product such as hot sauce or the method of obtaining it and the means to sell it through a website or social media platform. Each of the essential pieces to successfully selling hot sauce online will require some money down, although selling online can be relatively inexpensive compared to other methods of starting a hot sauce business.

Hot sauce product

Selling online will require a physical product even though it will not be displayed as it may on a traditional store shelf. Hot sauce intended to be sold online can be made by yourself if your state cottage food law allows it or you can hire manufacturers from pre-registered facilities like Private Label and Co-Packers to manufacture it for you.

Registration, Permit, License

Almost every form of selling hot sauce requires registration, permits, or licenses in some form and this is true for online sales as well. However, the type of registration and fees is determined either by qualifying as a home processing seller or manufacturing hot sauce through FDA recommendations.

Webpage

A webpage with a storefront is the best option for selling hot sauce online. Social media can have a strong online presence, but the customer conversion rate increases with a strong landing page and other linking pages as reinforcement.

Pros and Cons of selling hot sauce online

Every business opportunity has reasons it works for some people and other reasons it doesn’t work for other people. Selling hot sauce online can be a quick and low-cost way to enter the business but it still keeps you from making any face-to-face sales and that may be your specialty.