From Recipe to Retail: Steps to Create a Sellable Product | Modern Restaurant Management | The Business of Eating & Restaurant Management News

Are your customers always asking to take home some extras of your salsa, BBQ sauce, or house salad dressing?Do you think there might be a market to actually sell it; first at your restaurant and then to local retailers/grocers but you have no idea where do you start?

Do you just make “extra batches” and bottle it in your restaurant kitchen and slap a label on it? Nope! Not a good idea unless you want to take the chance of selling a product that is not food safe and being sued!

Not so “known fact”; there is a big difference between a “culinary recipe” used in a restaurant kitchen and the one that is handed to a manufacturer for bottling.

Below explains the steps in generalities of how to either get your product made, whether for sale in your restaurant, for taking it retail or for e-commerce.

What are the most important attributes you need to have before making any commitment to create a sellable product?y Money, time, patience and education, the latter meaning…

Chef Liz Thompson

Chef Liz Thompson received an MBA in marketing and finance before switching gears and attending the French Culinary Institute to become a pastry chef which has been her career path for the last 25 years. She worked for numerous restaurants in New York and Los Angeles before co-owning “The Pig, Memphis Style BBQ” in West L.A. and Universal City Walk. She then taught pastry and restaurant management at The Art Institute of California before moving on to recipe formulation and new product development. She helps clients develop and manufacture products such as bbq sauces, seasonings, salsas, and salad dressings and co-owns a restaurant product line recently accepted by Kroger.

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Chef Liz Thompson