Stories · Two Rivers Hot Sauce · Small-batch hot sauce, three varieties
The first hundred bottles were research. The next four thousand were a business.
Dani made hot sauce in a rented commercial kitchen and sold it at markets. What she did not have was anywhere to think, receive a pallet of bottles, or meet a distributor.
Dani’s product was ready before her business was. She had a co-packer lined up, a label a friend designed, and a kitchen table covered in spreadsheets she did not trust. She took a dedicated desk in January after the New Year Pastries & products, and moved into office 3-13 in April when the bottles needed a door, mostly, she says, because someone at the pastry table asked her what her landed cost was and she did not know.
She has been to all three masterclasses since. The finance session moved her onto proper inventory accounting; the business-plan session produced the document she took to a distributor in July. The storage unit holds her bottles now, which is important because bottles come by the pallet and she lives in a one-bedroom.
Bottles come by the pallet and I live in a one-bedroom. The storage room is the reason I could order a pallet at all.
Two Rivers is in fourteen stores across Alberta as of September. Dani still comes to Show & tell and still tells the story of the first hundred bottles, the ones with the label that came off in the fridge. That story, and a candle maker’s, is why October’s Show & tell is packaging.
Come and stand in it.
Nobody rents a desk they have not sat at. Twenty minutes on the floor, no pitch. If it fits what you are building, you will already know.