First Week of 2014 Production
Greetings, Sosu nation!
I hope everyone is enjoying their summer! It’s been a busy past couple of months for us here at Sosu, but we’re anxious to getting started on our production, which began this week! For our 2014 season, we’re actually switching some things up. One major change for this year is the new kitchen space that we’ve moved into. The kitchen we were working in last year was located in Brentwood, a little further commute than we'd like. This year, we’re much closer to our main office and warehouse with our new kitchen space located in Oakland. Instead of driving for nearly an hour to Brentwood, we’re now about 5 minutes away from our new kitchen!
Production time is always challenging for us as we use only fresh ingredients and process everything ourselves, but it's so rewarding and truly satisfying. Seeking a little more help for this big season, we've added 3 pairs of hands to our team: Hilda, Griselda, and Carlos. We're really excited to have them on board with us! In addition, we're also working with 4 farmers this year as opposed to just 2 last season, which means we're also increasing our amount of input. Just to give you folks an idea of how much we're working with, we're ordering nearly 85,000 pounds of tomatoes this year compared to only 7,000 pounds last year! This week, we're already working hard in cooking our tomatoes and peppers. Again, the challenge is there but we are always prepared to face it head on. We stand by our commitment of offering products only containing fresh and healthy ingredients for our wonderful consumers and supporters! As the first week of production comes to a close, we've finished filling hundreds of jars of our Srirachup. We should be hitting the shelves in a few weeks or so!
Last year, we partnered with 20 stores and sold out all of our product. We'd like to thank all of our supporters out there for taking a shot on us. This year, we're looking to make more noise, aiming to partner with nearly 200 businesses! We're still a small company, but we have a lot of fight and passion in us. We love being the underdog. We embrace it. We're introducing our new Barrel-Aged Sriracha this season that we feel can help us achieve our vast goal. We have a great existing fan base that is also expanding. With a big year ahead of us, we can't slow down for one bit. We have such a great group of followers and supporters that make us feel confident in succeeding for this year!
A look into our new kitchen in Oakland
Checking out our new warehouse space! A work still in progress
Cooking time!
Stirring until it's ready to be filled into jars
The filling process. Hot stuff!
One batch of Srirachup all finished!