Co Manufacturing

FireFly Barbecue specializes in manufacturing barbecue sauce, barbecue rubs, seasonings and other sauces using only the highest quality of ingredients from all over the world.

Where to Start

Do you have a food product currently on the market or a recipe for a new product that you would like to see on the shelves? Or perhaps you wish to market some of our house recipes under your own label?

Firefly Barbecue will provide you with a signed Non-disclosure Agreement prior to accepting a copy of your recipe. Upon receipt of this document, you would send a sample of your sauce or seasoning and a copy of your recipe and payment for the £200 R&D fee*. Samples will not be made until the R&D fees are paid.  You may send it via registered mail so that you will have a signature showing we received the copy of your recipe. Our Research and Development Department will produce a sample, run the appropriate tests on the product and will contact you with a sample and a pricing structure.

 It is important to realize in this process that manufacturers do not purchase inventory at the grocery store and Firefly Barbecue will attempt to get as close as possible to your flavor profile using our stock inventory.

* £200 R&D Fee only applies to recipes that are made with standard ingredients.  If your recipe involves the use of expensive, exotic, or hard to source ingredients the fees can be as high as £400 per breakdown.  Your payment of the R&D Fee does not constitute or imply ownership of the final manufacturing formula developed by Firefly Barbecue.

Requirements

Firefly Barbecue is licensed and monitored through the FSA and HSE. These government agencies place requirements on the manufacturing of products that will ultimately be sold to the general public. Most of the requirements are fulfilled by Firefly Barbecue, however, a few of the requirements can only be fulfilled by the contract customer and would need to be met prior to Firefly Barbecue manufacturing any product for the customer.

The requirements that each customer would need to meet are outlined below. If you currently have your product on the market, chances are you have already fulfilled these requirements.

After Firefly Barbecue has received written or email acceptance of the final sample and pricing and prior to producing an order for you, Firefly Barbecue will require documentation of the requirements that need to be met by you, the customer. When the requirements have been met, Firefly Barbecue will begin producing your product.  For questions or concerns please contact Firefly Barbecue.

Products

Firefly Barbecue is an acidified glass packager, hot fill, pouch, PET jar and is licensed to produce many different products. These products might include, but are not limited to, the following types of products:

  • Barbecue Sauce
  • Spaghetti or pasta sauce
  • Jams or Jellies
  • Marinades
  • Pizza Sauce
  • Other sauces or tomato-based condiments
  • Seasonings
  • Spice Rubs

Helpful Tips

Whether your product is new to the market or an existing recipe, it is important to be specific with your formula. Firefly Barbecue can only produce a good sample if the information is correct to begin with. Here are some tips to think about while you are getting the recipe ready to send to our R&D team:

  1. Keep it simple and standard if possible. Obviously, a recipe with 25 ingredients will be more costly to produce than a recipe with 10.
  2. Avoid building a recipe around a name brand product. Try the recipe with the more cost-effective generic ingredients if possible. Some name brand products are not available in bulk or food service sizes and some may even require a licensing agreement for use in your recipe.
  3. Avoid using pre-packaged seasoning blends such as taco seasoning, Mrs. Dash or guacamole mix as these are very costly to purchase and are usually not available in bulk. Be creative and develop your own flavor profile by using your own blend of single ingredients such as garlic powder, black pepper, salt, ground celery, cumin, etc.
  4. Avoid using blended, canned products such as Tomato soup or baked beans as these can only be purchased in small cans making the manufacturing process difficult.
  5. BE ACCURATE IN YOUR INFORMATION:  If you are using a #10 or 3.75kg  bottle of ketchup, please state that in your recipe.  If you are using raw vegetables, please give the total weight of the vegetables used rather than a count of the items. (example: 336 grams of green bell pepper instead of 1 green bell pepper).  If you are measuring out dry ingredients instead of weighing them, please convert those measurements to weight.  If this is not possible, then please clarify your measurements by using the terms such as level teaspoon, rounded teaspoon or heaping teaspoon. Please convert measurements such as a ‘pinch’ or ‘dash’ into weights as the meaning of this type of measurement has eroded over the years to mean many things to many people.
  6. If using branded products state which brand a each company uses different formulas.
  7. ****Accurate measurements of all ingredients is very important. inc Oil for frying.
  8. Methods of cooking, multiple stages, can add additional costs.

Things to Consider

Expect to compromise a little on flavour.  Most recipe development requests come to us in the form of a home-cooked or stove-top style recipe. We ask that you do not expect your sample to match your stove-top product exactly. The primary reason is that Firefly Barbecue does not purchase spices, tomato products, vegetables, oils, sugars, or any other inventory item from grocery stores or box stores. As a manufacturer, we use high quality bulk ingredients. Sometimes these items will carry a different flavor profile than those purchased in a grocery store or from a food-service provider.

Another thing to remember is that unless your product is currently on the market, the end consumer will not be looking for any difference in flavor between your stove-top recipe and our manufacturing formula as they will not know what your stove-top recipe would taste like. If the product is very close, the consumer will likely enjoy that product as much as you currently enjoy your home-made product.

A third reason is that in the manufacturing process, these recipes will need to be graduated from your stove-top recipe to our 60 or 90 litre formula. All ingredients are not linear in nature and Firefly Barbecue will make every effort to graduate the formula from your stove-top recipe to our sample batch, then to the manufacturing level as accurately as possible. Sometimes there are unavoidable and minor variances in flavor that will occur during this process.

REMEMBER: It is often virtually impossible to get a manufactured product to taste exactly like it does in your kitchen, so please do not keep a wonderful product from the market just because the flavor is not identical to what you would make at home.

Recipe Development

Recipe Development will occur after Firefly Barbecue has signed a Confidential Disclosure Agreement (if applicable). Upon receipt of the Agreement, your company representative would need to sign the Agreement and mail a copy of the signature page, the recipe and the £200 recipe development fee to our R&D department. The recipe will then be examined by our personnel, supplies will be gathered and a small sample (usually 6 to 12 bottles) will be made. A couple of bottles of the sample will be shipped to your company for approval of the flavor along with a price quote (please provide your physical address for shipping purposes).

Firefly Barbecue will be happy to make up to three adjustments to any particular recipe to get the flavour as close as possible to what you are looking for. Please keep in mind that the flavour profile of some of the ingredients that we use may vary somewhat from what you may be using when creating the recipe (see Things to Consider).

The recipe development fee is £200 and is considered non-refundable.

Important Information

  • Product recipes will need to be developed to manufacturing levels according to the size increments employed by Firefly Barbecue (See Recipe Development). For many types of products, Firefly Barbecue would carry the raw materials year-round thus requiring no contract for production; however, if your product requires an inventory item or glass that is not usually carried in stock and cannot be used by any other contract, Firefly Barbecue would require a signed contract to indemnify our company against any loss that may occur if we no longer produce your products.
  • Firefly Barbecue does not purchase labels; however, you may have your labels shipped to our company for application at no extra charge. This only applies to labels that we can use on our label machine.  In regards to scheduling our production run, most customers will be allowed to pay at the time of pickup or prior to shipping the product.  Some customers will be required to pay ½ down at the time of the order and the remainder upon pickup or shipping if there is a large amount of inventory that must be paid for immediately by Firefly Barbecue. New customers, especially those that are not currently on the market, are not automatically given extended payment terms until a relationship and credit agreement has been established which will take an approximate year of doing business together and will depend upon ordering frequency and past payment history.  Firefly Barbecue will need an average of 2 weeks lead time for all orders. Firefly Barbecue provides all containers, closures and raw materials.
  • Wholesale: Applies to any product purchased by your company for resale under the Firefly Barbecue owned label. A wholesale customer will need  to meet the minimum order requirements. For more information, please contact Firefly Barbecue
  • Pricing and Minimum Order Requirements: Our company has the capacity to produce any size order you may need; however, the minimum order for any particular product is 40kg Spices, 90 litre sauces. When quoting the price, Firefly Barbecue. will include pricing for the minimum order, then the first price break at one full day’s run of the product. Absolutely no estimates or pricing will be offered until we have examined the recipe.