Inside a Batch Day at the Factory

A batch day starts with fruit. Papaya, mango or pineapple gets cut by hand on the steel bench, because a machine cannot tell a ripe papaya from one that needs another day.

Peppers are weighed separately. That is the step nobody outside the factory thinks about and the one that decides whether a batch is right, since two boxes of Madame Jeanette from the same grower are rarely the same strength.

Everything goes into the kettle together and the mixer runs. The sauce is cooked, tasted, adjusted, tasted again. This is where most of the day goes.

Bottling is the fast part. The filler doses each bottle, caps go on by hand, and labels follow. A batch that is cooked by lunchtime is usually capped and boxed by mid-afternoon.

None of it is complicated. All of it is done by people who have done it a thousand times, which is a different thing from automated.