1 minute read
Salsa
continued from Page #1
"We told them (at the church) that we made it and then we started getting people calling us wanting orders."
Advertisement
It was taking Savage two hours to make three jars after buying the ingredients, cooking it and letting it sit He began to stay up late every night making salsa due to the demand from friends Upon doing some research, he found that it was illegal to make it and sell it out of his home, so he decided to try to rent space in a restaurant to use their kitchen to make the salsa there Without luck from that angle, Savage discovered copacking A copacker is a company that manufactures and packages foods or other products for their clients To market and distribute, a copacker works under contract with the hiring company to manufacture food as though the products were manufactured directly by the hiring company. Savage used County Fair Foods from Arlington as their copacking company. Later, they went with Renfro Foods out of Fort Worth
His research began with a simple internet search and County Fair Foods were one of the few copackers that had a website, so Savage became familar with the program
Savage had to visit the Arlington company and do several 'recipe runs' to make sure his recipe was precisely duplicated by County Fair Foods. After a month of tweaking, they sent the salsa off to a lab to verify its acidity to make sure it was shelf-stable and see how long it is shelf-stable Once that was all approved, it ws time to start ordering
Savage, a Howe native who went kindergarten through graduation in Howe ISD, tipped his salsa hat to his roots and named the product Summit Salsa
"When Howe was first found, it was named Summit and we really wanted somehow to include our town in our name to include in our branding Howe Salsa just kind of sounded weird." Savage joked. "We went with Summit Salsa Company. The people that aren't from around here expect to see mountains on the logo, but for us locals, we all understand what that's about "
Summit Salsa Company has two different products available It is a sweet salsa that has a lot of green bell pepper that makes it stand out from the others that continued from Page #6
