Too bad. I would have loved to drop in.
Moving forward, will you be carrying items such as saucisson?
I used to buy Olli’s salami from Costco ( they are the only store that carries Olli’s products other than the wild boar in the 11 (?) ounce larger size ) Wegman carries them in the 6 ounce but Weman’s is the only store that carries Olli’s wild boar salami .
Now, Olli does not sell it in any grocery store ( except Balducci) other than thru their internet site and some gourmet internet store. I do not think it has to be refrigerated but shipping is expensive by the time they pack it in dry ice.
Balducci does carry it but the deli manager told me that D’artagna’ns duck salami is even better for $13.99 instead of $11.99.
I do not think it has to be refrigerated. D’artagnan can sell them at discount for $59.99 for 6- 6 ounce size but s upping is expensive bec they also send it by next day express or overnight in dry ice. If it does nto have to be packed in dry ice, it might be a good product to sell
We definitely will not be carrying that kind of product at this point. We are looking at products that are in sealed packaging and shelf stable for at least a year without refrigeration before opening. There may come a time when there is so much demand for products needing refrigeration or dry ice that we will diversify in that direction, but that would probably be years down the line.
Understood. But physical stores are very expensive to rent and run, and they are much more limited in space for inventory. I like stores, too, when I want to browse or would like to buy something and take it home right away, but they really occupy a different niche than subscription boxes of great sauces and condiments curated for you.
I understand completely. But I think you will probably not be shipping to Europe, for umpteen reasons, which means I can only offer moral support.
This all sounds really exciting!! (And exhausting!) best of luck with the endless paperwork and not as much fun logistics. And of course let us know when the website goes up :))
I will let you know! We have a few more things to do before we start taking subscriptions. I hope to start within a month.
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Hi, everyone! I’m way overdue for an update. First, I want to tell you all a little about the Winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco, which my brother/partner and I attended in January. It was exhausting but not nearly to the extent of the way larger show last summer in New York, and it helped a lot that the two of us were working together this time. It was interesting to see the trends in the food industry. There are a lot of products now that are low-sugar or have no sugar added, including hot sauces and jams, organic is in, and there was also an emphasis on gluten-free products from purveyors of foods for which that’s relevant - and some for which it’s not.
Some highlights: Cane Land has a big sugar cane plantation in Louisiana and makes fantastic dark and spiced rums and wonderful rum cake. They don’t make hot sauce or condiments, but they do make spiced rum pecans that are a nice snack. There were several other purveyors of delicious flavored peanuts and other nuts - a personal favorite was the Everything Goes Nuts by Bobby Sue’s Nuts from Chappaqua, New York, whose flavoring is meant to be like everything bagels, but I like it more than those. There was another booth giving pours of excellent Italian red and white wines. Of course it’s a good idea not to drink too much wine and rum while you’re working, and we didn’t! We also tried some rich dark chocolates made with hot peppers. We enjoyed the Sardinian cheese booth - Pecorino Sardo is a very good cheese. And Essendorfer, the Bavarian company I mentioned last winter, came back to the San Francisco Fancy Food Show with a whole bunch of additional products, all of which were excellent.
There were a couple of organic hot sauce makers we liked that are making sauces with only a few ingredients that really depend on flavorful peppers, and the ones we liked best are made by a vineyard in Napa that also grows their own unusual hot peppers. They were funny - their hot sauces weren’t displayed, because they were emphasizing other products like flavored olive oils and wines, but when we asked them if they had anything else, they said “We have some hot sauces, if you’d have any interest in that.”
Also while visiting San Francisco, I tried a bunch of sauces my brother picked up on trips to Europe and Japan. We particularly liked a number of sauces from Japan. For example, we loved a condiment of fried onions and garlic with chili, a roasted red chili soy sauce, a seven spices miso with kombu and a crunchy, garlicky wasabi oil furikake sauce, meant to be used to flavor rice.
I also have a bit of fairly exciting news: We just started advertising on Facebook. Right now, our main aim is to determine which of a number of possible company names seems to be most popular, but because we tested 4 ads against each other, we also have had somewhat of a chance to compare their effectiveness in attracting people to go to our landing page and leave their emails for us to contact them when we’re sending out information about subscriptions. We also have the lineup of products for our first deliveries to our subscribers planned out. When we’re ready to take subscriptions, I’ll post a link to the URL here, for anyone who might be interested. Wish us luck in continuing to advertise and try to find customers for our subscription service!
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Wishing you luck!
Can you say what’s the name of the place in Napa with the hot sauce with flavorful peppers?
Were the hot sauces from the Clif Family Winery? We have friends who used to live in Napa, and they would buy them for us when they were at Clif. Really good, but hot!
https://www.cliffamily.com/blog/2018/10/16/organic-single-varietal-hot-sauces/
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Whaoh…! Sign me up for this!!
Definitely keep us updated, hope all your time and energy pays off
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Glad to hear things are heading in the right direction 
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Yes, they’re the ones! Folks here are really sharp and knowledgeable! That’s why I love this site. 
Thanks for your good wishes! I’ll post more information before long.
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Jarred caramelized onions. The only times I’ve had these were in Harry&David gift baskets and balsamic caramelized onion spread from Robert Rothchild Farm, They aren’t hard to make, of course, but time-consuming.
Vadouvan. I like the jarred powder from U Simply Season, but if you research vadouvan, you realize it should actually be a long-cooked paste, something I would not undertake, as it is heated to the brink of scorching.
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Thanks for the thoughts. On caramelized onions: We’ve come across some very good jarred caramelized onions, including balsamic onions of different kinds. We may indeed carry some of those at some point, though some of the jars are bigger than we want to ship for now.
Hi, everybody! I hope all of you are well and coping well in these crazy times!
I’ll cut to the chase and then give more of an update. The short version is that we are now looking to launch as a snacks-and-hot-sauce subscription box company, and therefore, I would love your recommendations of snacks with a pretty long shelf life (so not goods that you pick up at your local bakery and eat the same day - think at least around 9 months’ shelf life before opening) that you miss when you’re not in a country you used to live in (other than the U.S., though we’re open to artisanal American snacks, too, if they’re not available in supermarkets).
The longer version is: When we were close to launching as a hot sauce subscription box company, we looked at our competition again and saw that, although no-one based in the U.S. had nearly as good a lineup as we did (and I say that because I have tried the hot sauces they are selling and we didn’t consider some of them special enough to sell), that market seemed saturated. And since we had already started looking at snacks as a nice extra to provide for our subscribers, we decided to shift gears and make this a snacks-and-hot sauce subscription box company. We have tried some excellent snacks and figure to focus on items with a spicy or at least savory component, not for example purely sweet snacks (for example, I tried a fantastic take on a trail mix that includes organic almonds, craisins and rosemary, Indonesian cashews with lime leaves and chili, fudge with chipotle and ancho, and habanero pralines). However, we don’t yet have enough snacks for a year’s worth of deliveries, so any ideas you can give me would be most welcome!
Though I haven’t lived in Italy, I have been lucky to have friends to visit there. One snack I miss is taralli, those satisfying little olive oil biscuits (some refer to them as crackers). I have even had an opened bag last for months back home, if I can stop myself from nibbling.
Kimchi products
Ie pouched kimchi, paste, sauce
Black licorice, sweet and salty
Israeli halva, tahini and couscous
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