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What I Learned From Making Hot Sauce at Scale in China
- Markoff 8y agolet's better not tell her to read Poorly made in China if she thinks her product will have same ingredients/formula after few months of production, that book perfectly describe daily Chinese reality/mentality if you are interested, can confirm it as someone who worked there for years. for starters any contract it's useless piece of paper
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ilamont 8y agoCongratulations. Curious if there are any concerns about counterfeits showing up in China - or is this really aimed at the overseas market?
- jacquesm 8y ago> or is this really aimed at the overseas market? It says so right in the article.
- Scoundreller 8y agoAuthor says: "The good news is, the labels look beautiful and are basically irreplicable — good luck to anyone who tries to knock off my branding." But that sounds like a challenge.
- jhwang5 8y agoTo be blunt, beauty of the label or even branding is in the eyes of the beholder. Whatever segment she's going for, there are infinite ways to tweak and target more specific niches.
- esturk 8y agoI think the author just underestimates Chinese ingenuity when it comes to counterfeit goods. There's more to just spoofing the label. There's also naming, pricing, etc.
- Markoff 8y agothere are already tons of established brands for this product in China, so I don't think anyone in China would even trust her genuine product, let alone try to counterfeit it for domestic market
- barkingcat 8y ago4. The Human Element of Food Manufacturing Basically in China human manufacturing rules over all. Many westerners have misconceptions about automation in factories. Those fancy iPhone XR's? Assembled by Hand in China (with mechanical assistance) but still, assembled by Hand by real people. China has way too high population for automation. If you call to build a factory, there will be millions of people wanting jobs. These jobs are not good jobs and are labour intensive, but the desire for jobs outweighs any other concern.
- jcims 8y agoI often wonder about the short term impact of efforts to drive employment conditions and pay of these jobs to more 'western' standards. What happens when a factory is built on the edge of a small town and the starting salary and working conditions are better than 75% of the jobs in the region? I'm sure there's a 'rising tide raises all ships' element and the long term effects would have to be beneficial. But in the short term i wonder if there's a labor drain/golden handcuffs effect.
- swiley 8y agoIt's the same as what happens in the US. Eventually something happens to the factory and everyone turns to drugs and prostitution.
- kareemm 8y agoI was struck by this when I went to visit Shanghai in 2002. I was sitting beside a recent MBA grad who was originally from China. We got to talking. At one point in the conversation he asked me a hypothetical question about how I would design a system to determine traffic conditions. I responded with an answer laying out cameras at intersections and software to make sense of the video. He responded that in China they’d just put a person at every intersection who would send a text message to a team of humans who would update a webpage. It drove home the point to me that labour was so abundant and cheap there that you could often throw more bodies at the problem instead of writinf software... and probably solve the problem better.
- jacquesm 8y agoMaking large batches of food homogeneous is super hard. It is hard enough to do it in small batches, but when you scale up the processes gravity really becomes your enemy. For the automated filling I would look at using a spout with a shaker attached to it that can measure off a very precise amount of granular material without getting clogged. Finally, nobody seems to be wearing either latex gloves or masks in any of the photos, that may be to make the photos nicer but it is not how you run a proper food packaging chain that has humans in the loop.
- Symbiote 8y ago> Finally, nobody seems to be wearing either latex gloves or masks in any of the photos They're sticking labels on sealed jars and putting them in a box, what benefit would gloves and masks bring?
- Scoundreller 8y agoOn the gloves end, less wear and tear on the skin (callouses), and better grip.
- starky 8y agoHave you ever tried to handle a label with rubber gloves on? It is damn near impossible.
- Scoundreller 8y agoYou need to hold the jar with one hand. Wear a glove on that hand, pick the label off with the other. It would be more efficient to have separate labellers and box fillers, but that's more RSI.
- reaperducer 8y agonobody seems to be wearing either latex gloves or masks in any of the photos In a different version of the same story, there are photos of the workers who actually handle the food using gloves: https://www.thecleaverquarterly.com/stories/sichuan-chili-crisp https://www.thecleaverquarterly.com/stories/sichuan-chili-cr...
- jcims 8y agoI wonder if/how you would do any kind of continuous testing with food/aromatic products like this. Have a taste panel on site? Do some basic go/no go tests for what, pH, viscosity, gas chromatograph (lol?). Hard to put test points on a jar of sauce.
- stevenwoo 8y agoThe Sriracha company doesn't try too hard to make each batch identical from their FAQ - just the variation in chiles alone make that impossible except within a 55 gallon mix, it sounds like it would not be possible without using a lot of additional ingredients to smooth out the flavor between batches like companies do with orange juice. https://www.huyfong.com/#pg-54-1 https://www.huyfong.com/#pg-54-1 PS. if near Los Angeles, they have factory tours and welcome photography of everything.
- Kagerjay 8y agoI was over there 2 years ago. They don't make identical batches, most of the chiles they get come from 1 time of the year. They preblend a 55 gallon mix (Its their chile paste you can buy at the grocery store) and use that production stock for the rest of the year. They add some additives / flavors etc to make the actual srircha afterwards. Srircha only carries 3 products, chile paste, chile paste with garlic, and srircha. Factory tour was worth it, I had to plan a month in advance but it was really cool to see. Especially how many 55 gallon jugs they store in their warehouse. I don't know what the exact testing method they used for quality control, that part of factory was off limits and they didn't explain it either
- loosetypes 8y agoI think I really like that. I had an interesting conversation the with an oyster farmer about the variability in taste geographically in the northeast. And to me, honey is just honey. But apparently some folks can discern by taste which flower pollens comprise a batch. But then you drink a Coca Cola, which tastes exactly the same no matter where or when. It’s like it’s more of a chemistry experiment than a food.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- bdickason 8y agoGreat post! I’ve seen the hardware side of manufacturing and also been amazed at how hard packaging / filling is when my ex launched a hair care line... her conditioner was also too viscous to go through the factory nozzles :/
- kweks 8y agoSmall note for a anyone on a similar path researching reliable China-based fulfillment for crowdfunding campaigns or ecommerce.. We have tested and physically inspected literally every major and minor Hong Kong and China fulfillment provider, and settled upon SPNS ( https://warehouse.expert https://warehouse.expert ). They are the only provider we found with western-education, that provide actual service (customer support, optimising routes and delivery companies, working directly with your end customer to reduce loss, fighting with couriers to negotiate refunds and insurance etc) The guy heading up the operation is Victor, and can be contacted via team@spnslogistics.com (Full disclosure: I am not associated with the company - but having spent years finding a decent solution am happy to share it)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tnolet 8y agoThis story is amazing and probably a parable for every hardware based startup.
- walrus01 8y ago> " Chili supplier and blend: I found a supplier who stone-grinds their dried chilis the traditional way rather than using a machine, which retains the luster, natural oils and bright red color that I needed the sauce to have." This sounds remarkably similar to the problem faced by people who are into seriously expensive coffee. Basically, a "conical burr" grinder crushes the beans together, whereas a cheap spinning blade type grinder chops them apart into flaky bits. The former is strongly preferred by coffee snobs, and the use of the latter is seen as barely better than buying preground coffee. My theory is that the stone part is actually not essential, but it's the crushing/grinding mechanism that preserves the oil and luster (could be done equally well with stainless steel), whereas some sort of shredding blade allows too much of the oils to escape.
- secabeen 8y agoAt the higher end of coffee, there's a big debate about whether conical or flat burrs are better. The absolute top of the line grinders (at $2k) have both options: https://www.kafatek.com/ https://www.kafatek.com/
- walrus01 8y agoThat looks like a piece of laboratory equipment.
- washadjeffmad 8y agoWhen most peoole cook at home, all they're doing is shoddy chemistry with bad lab equipment. Getting slightly better equipment is the best way to improve your cooking or make anything the same way more than once. Want to remember an exact reduction for a sauce? Use a refractometer and record the results. Want to scale a recipe easily? Covert it to % soln or mass/mass (see baker's ratio).
- colordrops 8y agoWhatever Jenny Gao is doing, she's on point with marketing. I've been seeing her and her product all over the internet for a month now.
- deanCommie 8y agoThe writing skill speaks for itself. I followed every single link she included, and was utterly engaged by every word and entry. I suppose there is also the aspect that she is engaging different types of readers (foodies, techies, entrepreneurs, etc), but honestly I was ready to buy the sauce three paragraphs into my first read.
- sytelus 8y agoIf you were non-Chinese, how do you go about finding suppliers, factories, label designers etc who can manufacture the prototype you have?
- contingencies 8y agoIt depends on the product. In general, you can either do it yourself, contract out sub-assemblies and perform final assembly, or give it to a factory with related experience and have them execute. With simple products like this, you are better off taking option #3 .. it saves a lot of overhead with respect to legals, financials, setup, etc.
- barry-cotter 8y agoYou find some people in your city who used to work in China, talk to them, hear how hard sourcing and quality control was and probably give up. Or you find those people on LinkedIn but this stuff is hard for people who really understand China. Making the right connections is hard, staying on top of communications is hard, quality control is comically hard.
- csours 8y ago> 1. No one will demand excellence from your product except you. I agree so much with this. Put more cynically, no one cares more about your problems than you.
- baybal2 8y agoHer backers have had to discover Laoganmna before dishing out money...
- barrkel 8y agoThis is a lovely marketing piece. Great story, and hammers home the drive to quality, which of course backs up the brand. And it's a story of triumph over adversity, which makes you root for the little guy (or girl, in this case). Very smart.
- 21 8y agoUmami, that umami texture...
- user5994461 8y agoStill no clue what that is after reading the article.
- vfulco2 8y agoMy biggest lesson and cautionary tale after launching a professional services company in Shanghai, think English resume editing, LinkedIn Profiles creation, interview coaching and academic entrance services, is to to pick your partners very carefully. There is an infuriating aspect to contracts here where upon signature, the real negotiations on terms begins, even for the simplest points. Be prepared to spend inordinate time on what would be obvious and elementary in the U.S.