![]() ![]() Then there are the margins, which are frustratingly low. Chile Crunch is the condiment you need now. Hojel buys the ingredients in bulk, but she’s still the one running garlic through the food processor.įorget sriracha. The hot oil is the problem for the co-packers.” The cooking time alone for one batch is 35 to 40 minutes. If I increase the amount of ingredients to make more jars, by the time I get everything out of the pan, the Chile Crunch is burnt. “You can’t get it out of the pot fast enough. “Chile Crunch is cooked at a very high temperature in oil, which keeps cooking and it’s very slow to cool,” she says. The question remains: to grow or not to grow? Hojel estimates that she’s talked with 30 to 40 co-packers across the country, but nobody’s been willing to take her on (at least not yet). When I cook, I get up at 4:30 AM, and my shifts are from 6 AM to 1 PM in the kitchen three days a week.” On the other hand, scaling up and automating production has been much more difficult than she anticipated. “I get up, I’m at the computer at 6 AM, trying to answer emails. “I am living and breathing Chile Crunch,” Hojel says. “I’ve been making as many jars as I can,” she says-16,000 jars since January 1, 2015. ![]() After three days’ labor in the kitchen, Hojel comes away with about 740 jars of product. This requires sautéing seven ingredients-roasted chilies, onions, garlic and spices-in canola oil, a slow process that yields only about eight 30-jar batches in a seven-hour shift. She logs long hours in a commercial kitchen three days a week, and along with a helper, makes each batch of Chile Crunch by hand. “Williams-Sonoma’s first order was for 500 cases ,” Hojel says, “and they were very accommodating when I said it would take me three months to produce that many jars.” And that’s, of course, the moment Williams Sonoma came calling with a large private-label order. Her existing retail contracts this summer-stores in 18 states, plus online orders through her Web site-were about all she could handle. But customer love and retail response quickly become a liability if you can’t produce fast enough to get ahead of them. Whole Foods stores in Denver and Boulder carry Chile Crunch, and she does demos a few times a week at local farmers’ markets. Hojel’s got the kind of exposure most foodmakers would envy. On the one hand, it’s a good problem to have. Her unique recipe has her in a tough spot: She can’t turn it over to a co-packer (as hard as she’s tried), and she feels like she’s maxed out on what she can accomplish in the Denver commercial kitchen where she and an assistant slave for seven hours a day, three days a week. Retailers would be happy to feed their addiction, but Hojel has a problem.
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