Sauce Label Design: 4 Ways to Make Your Special Sauce Stand Out!

You’ve worked hard to develop your special sauce. Perhaps it’s a recipe passed down through your family or a product you’ve arrived at through much trial and error. When you’re ready to take your secret sauce to the masses, the right sauce label design makes all the difference.

There’s a big world out there when it comes to sauce label design. If you want your hot sauce or BBQ sauce labels to stand out from the crowd, you’ll need to spend some time crafting the perfect label design and selecting the best type of label for your product.

Here are 4 ways to ensure your hot sauce label design is just as fiery as the product within.

1. Make Sure Your Sauce Label Design Conveys the Right Information

First and foremost, a label is a way to convey important information. In the medical industry, labels are absolutely crucial for accuracy and messaging. But even for a product used in a consumer’s home or a commercial kitchen, the correct label information is vital.

It’s essential to familiarize yourself with labeling requirements for food products. Explore the FDA’s labeling requirements to get it right. You’ll need to include ingredients, allergen notes, ounces, nutrition information, and details about your manufacturing plant on your food label. Most food products must also be stamped with an expiration date or production date.

You may also want to include important information in your hot sauce label design, such as the heat level. It’s helpful for consumers to know the storage requirements too. For example, some sauces are stable enough to forgo refrigeration, while others will fare better when chilled.

2. Include Your Branding, Story, and Personality!

Once the technical constraints for your BBQ sauce or hot sauce label design are out of the way, you can start to work on the fun stuff! How will you capture your customer’s attention and share your story? There are many sauces out there, but yours is unique!

Look at the differentiators. What makes your sauce special? Is it the history of your brand? Was this sauce passed down from generations? Or perhaps you use unique ingredients—homegrown hatch chiles or heirloom tomatoes? Figure out what makes your product extraordinary and convey it on your label.

Labels play an integral role in helping you promote your product. Your sauce label design offers a chance to advertise your product, lure in sauce-lovers, and differentiate you from the other options out there. Use color and brand consistency to grab their attention. Maximize your use of space label space and create a sauce label design that enhances your product.

3. Be sure that Your Labels are Die-Cut to Fit the Bottle

There’s nothing more disappointing than coming up with a great design, only to find that it doesn’t fit the bottle. Fortunately, with die-cutting and an array of label options, you can adjust your sauce labels to fit your bottles and packaging seamlessly.

Often you may be limited by access to bottling supplies, especially if your sauce business is just getting off the ground and starting to branch out into the retail market. Seek labels that curve with the bottle and compliment the shape of your sauce container.

We’ve all seen the ubiquitous Heinz ketchup bottles—one of the celebrities of tomato sauce label design. You may have heard that if you hit 57 on the neck of the bottle, the ketchup comes out faster. But did you know that the whole concept was a gimmick dreamt up by H.J. Heinz, based on his lucky number? The labeling not only fits the sauce bottle, but it serves a purpose (and creates a very distinctive brand story in the process).

4. Select the Right Finish to Ensure Your Label Sticks Around

With food and beverage labeling, there’s another important consideration—will your sauce label design hold up to the wear and tear of the kitchen? Sauce labels are exposed to wet, cold, and hot environments often. Splashes of food and sauce can get on the bottles, and in a commercial environment, they might be wiped down frequently. So how do you ensure your label stays put?

Another crucial component of sauce label design is in the finish. Special coatings and lamination can help ensure that your label holds up to damp, cold, and warm environments. When the bottle sweats, you don’t want your label to go south! When it’s passed around the table, hand-to-hand, you don’t want your label to smudge or become illegible.

Special coatings and adhesives are available to ensure your label stays strong even in challenging environments. Some labels require more protection than others, but it’s always best to consider how your food product will be used and what common hazards it will face.

Your label tells a lot about your product and is critical to your success. There are few pieces of marketing collateral quite so vital to your brand as your product label. Take the time to ensure that your sauce label design meets all the needs and requirements to knock their socks off! Need help? Reach out to T&L Graphics today to learn more about our services. We’ll help you create the perfect label.