AboutJ. Peter Clark Expertise How various processed foods are made; ways to improve manufacturing; how to make a new food product.
Experience Employment history: Research Engineer, U.S.Agricultural Research Service, Associate Professor Chemical Engineering, Virginia Tech, Director of Research, Continental Baking Company, President, Epstein Process Engineering, Inc., Vice Presdent Technology, Fluor Daniel, Inc., Consultant to the Process Industries
Organizations: American Institute of Chemical Engineers (Fellow) Institute of Food Technologists, American Association of Cereal Chemists, American Association of Candy Technologists, American Society of Agricultural Engineers,
Publications: Several Encyclopedias (Kirk and Othmer, Chemical Technology; Food Science, Food Technology and Nutrition; Wiley Encyclopedia of Food Science and Technology; Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems); five books, two book chapters; numerous journals.
Education: BSChE Notre Dame PhD University of California, Berkeley
Awards: AIChE Food, Pharmaceutical and Bioengineering Division Award 1998
Clients: Major food processing and pharamaceutical companies.
Question QUESTION: I was wondering what the first steps would be in bottling and selling our restaurant's greek dressing. Our customers have enjoyed for the last 30 years and they all ask us to sell it. Thank You very much for your time. christos
ANSWER: Christos,
Depending on where you are in the US or elsewhere, there probably is a company that has the mixing and filling equipment to do what you want. One source for the US is the Private Label Manufacturers Association in New York, phone 212-972-3131, email info@plma.com. You need to decide approximate annual quantities (bottles per year), type of bottle (size, glass or plastic), label design (nutritional data, brand, ingredients), and formula (may not be identical to what you do now because it may not be stable for long times, for instance, or it may not use easily available ingredients). Most salad dressings have oil, vinegar and seasonings. Some have emulsifiers, such as gums or egg yolk. The vinegar or lemon juice helps to preserve the dressing, but if you want an emulsion, you may need a special mixer.
The first step, really, is to explore the market and see what is now available, what it sells for, maybe test among your customers to see what sells at different prices. I have seen many restaurants try this with dressings, BBQ sauce, and salsa. Relatively few are successful, sad to say, because in fact a restaurant customer base is too small for most manufacturing, most restaurateurs are not used to food processing, and many kitchen formulas are not designed for mass manufacture.
You could try doing it by hand, on a small scale, without modifying the formula, buying bottles, having labels printed, and selling at check-out. If you are successful, you could get some help in scaling up; if it does not do well, you have not lost much. But be prepared to adjust the formula and to make some compromises if you get larger.
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QUESTION: Thank you very much for your response, very imformative and useful. How would i do it small scale like it says? Do i need to patent it? Where to buy bottles and labels? and would i need a nutritional info label and how do i get that. Sorry for all the questions but my parents are in greece and when they get back in september id like to surprise them with a bottle of their own dressing. Thanx again....christos karageorgos
Answer 1. You do not need to patent your dressings, nor, probably, could you, as recipes are not usually patentable. The written recipe is automatically copyrighted if it is original with you. It could be officially registered, but need not be.
2. If you are just going to do a few dozen bottles and not sell over state lines, if at all, you do not need nutritional labels. If you do need them in the future, you would hire a specialist, consulting food scientist, to prepare it for you. He or she can do it from the recipe.
3. You can buy small quantities of bottles in some hardware or cooking supply stores for home canning. It is a little harder to get small quantities of other sizes - I would suggest using the type of Mason or Ball jars that are easily available.
4. You can make labels on a computer using standard mailing label stock and the graphics available in Word or Publisher.
5. Selling locally or giving food away is lightly regulated compared with selling interstate. You want to be safe and maintain quality, and it is labor intensive to make and fill small batches, but for what it sounds like you want, that approach should work fine.
