So you’ve been making your own salsas at home and everyone thinks it’s delicious. Everyone says that you should bottle and sell it. But how do you do it? Here are the Top 5 things that you need to do to help start your new business…

1. Talk to others who have done it – The best information you can get will be from others who have done what you are looking to do and most small business food purveyors are more than willing to give you advice. Learn all you can.
2. Find out about your local food regs – Check into your local county and state health departments to find out what the requirements are to be able to sell food products.
3. Find a Co-Packer – Co-Packers are food processing facilities which will take your recipe and make it in quantities, bottling, and packing it. Your Co-Packer will have a commerically approved kitchen facility and will be able to help you with your FDA requirements.
4. Fine tune your recipe – Usually you can fine tune and commericalize your recipes (convert the recipe for large quantity production) with the help of your Co-Packer.
5. Design a good label – The label for your product is just as important as the recipe. Find a good graphic designer, one who has experience with working on food products, as they should be familiar with the USDA requirements for the label.

This is just scraping the surface, but should give you a good start. The more information and education that you can get the better. And there is a lot of information easily available with some quick searches on the internet.