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By Kathleen Furore
Everyone loves the salsa you serve with your chips and the mole poblano that covers your chicken enchiladas. Your customers, friends and family members might even have told you to bottle and sell the sauces that come from your restaurant kitchen. Many restaurants have done just that, some with tremendous success. For example, El Patio — a restaurant that’s been serving great Mexican food in Austin, Texas, since 1954 — has succeeded to the point that the restaurant’s jarred salsas (introduced on a wide scale just over a year ago through El Patio Foods) are available on grocery store shelves throughout the state.
But it isn’t as simple as it sounds. Just ask Lulu Duran of Cesar’s Killer Margaritas in Chicago. In 2020, when the pandemic hit, she and her siblings Israel and Sandy Sanchez decided to bottle and sell the mole that had become such a popular menu item at their family-run restaurant. It is the mole the family’s matriarch, Lourdes Sanchez (affectionately known as “Senora Lulu”) learned to make as a young girl in her grandmother Clarita Vazquez’s Mexico City kitchen.
We reached out to Duran to find out about the challenges of bottling and selling a restaurant sauce.
el Restaurante: Did your mom’s mole play a role in helping you decide to open Cesar’s? Was it on the menu when the restaurant opened in 1991?
Lourdes Sanchez preparing her famous mole in the kitchen of Cesar's Killer Margaritas in Chicago.
Lulu Duran: It was a great recipe, but 32 years ago the market for Mexican food was very different. It wasn’t that big — [customers wanted] mostly tacos and burritos then — so my parents decided to give customers exposure to typical Mexican dishes on an all-you-can-eat buffet. That is how people started tasting the mole and how it started to get popular with our customers.
el Restaurante: How did you decide to start bottling the sauce? And what is the process like?
Duran: During Covid there was a real shift and we had to innovate and pivot. We make our mole in really big batches, so we had all of this frozen mole — and I thought, “What are we gonna do? How can we get customers?” We were packaging our margaritas so I thought, “What else can we bottle?” We started putting the mole in mason jars because we had to, literally, put food on the table. We bottle it all at the restaurant. We make about 30 gallons every two weeks to use in the restaurant and to bottle — we kill two birds with one stone.
el Restaurante: Where do you sell the mole? And how have sales been?
Duran: Right now, we only sell it at the restaurant and online. Our goal is to get on local store shelves, but that’s been difficult. Distributors want it to be shelf-stable, but using preservatives alters the flavor.
In the beginning, it was difficult because people really have to try it first. Now sales are picking up, especially during cold weather. We recently got a request from a couple to do their wedding — and they strictly want the mole. That will be a new adventure.
el Restaurante: Your salsa has the label El Mero Mole, not Cesar’s mole. How did you decide to create that label?
Duran: Originally, we had a very generic label with the restaurant’s name on it. But if you’ve never had mole and you looked at that generic bottle, it didn’t look very appealing. So, we worked with a designer to come up with names and a design. That was a group project. My grandma used to always say “el mero mero” which means “the main one, that’s it!” And the [design behind the logo] is a nod to an apron my mom would use.
el Restaurante: I know many restaurant owners and chefs think about doing just what you’ve done. What advice do you have for anyone thinking about bottling one of their sauces?
Duran: I would tell them to test the product with an unbiased market, not just your friends and family. See who your audience is and get honest opinions. And have a great label.
Tips for Packaging and Selling Your Sauces
It can be tempting to jump head-first into trying to market and sell your restaurant’s sauces when everyone tells you how much they love them. But it takes more than a great-tasting salsa and accolades from customers, family members and friends to turn a recipe into a retail business.
“Selling packaged food requires a different business plan than a restaurant business and can be just as much of a full-time job depending on how it is approached,” the post “Restaurants packaging and selling their signature sauces, dips and more” by Diane Longanbach, Innovation Counselor for the Michigan State University (MS) Extension Product Center, explains. The Center supports innovation and growth for business, industry and entrepreneurs in the food, agriculture and natural resource sectors. “Based on how it is sold, tasks will involve production, documenting, tracking, marketing, distributing or shipping, merchandizing, and additional financial management, not to mention the financing to get the brand launched.”
To determine if it is an undertaking right for your restaurant, Longanbach offers these tips:
- Consider where it will be sold. Will it just be sold at your restaurant and perhaps at a handful of stores within your own town? Or is your goal to sell in several stores within an hour's radius of your restaurant where you have brand recognition? Maybe your goal is to also add online sales. Regardless of the choice, recognize the logistics and employee time of each strategy.
- Think about safety for the shelf. Any sauce, condiment, or dip product that you want to be shelf stable will need to undergo a Process Authority Review to determine its safety and classification. Refrigerated and frozen products will not need a Process Authority Review; however, refrigerated products are restricted to a 7-day shelf life unless you can prove otherwise through a shelf-life test from a food lab. (See the Michigan State University Extension article, “Understanding shelf-life testing for packaged food products” for more information.)
- Discuss how products will be produced. Does your business have kitchen time and staff to dedicate to the production of the product plus time to market, distribute, and merchandise it? Or, would it be better to send it out to be processed by a co-manufacturer and your time would be focused on marketing and distribution? You might want to note that local health departments often require that packaged foods need to be made separately from ready-to-eat foods to avoid cross-contamination.) (See the MSU Extension article, “Preparing for high-volume food product sales: Are you ready for a co-packer?” for more information.
- Budget for branding. Your restaurant customers will likely purchase your packaged food products when they come to eat at your restaurant. Typically, these sales don’t require a significant investment in label design and packaging. Selling the products within your city or town where you have product and brand recognition will be easier than other areas. Once you step into the world of selling to people who have never tried your food, your label is everything. Your label will either get them to pick it up or look past it. Budgeting enough capital to design and print a colorful and exciting label with your logo and branding will be critical to your success.
- Explore packaging options. It’s tempting to find a unique bottle or jar that you believe will set you apart from the others on the shelf. However, it’ll also likely break the bank to buy a pallet or truckload of it if it can’t be sourced locally in smaller quantities. Instead, check with local distributors to see what is in stock.
Click here to go to the next article in this edition, Restaurant Reservations: Which System is Right for You?