Emotion Design Hot Sauce by Fuego Rosa

River Salsa by Fuego Rosa:Emotion Design Hot Sauce

What is River Salsa?



River Salsa is a unique blend of hot sauce made from Trinidad and Tobago grown peppers. The blend is secret of course! But it has the perfect level of spiciness, the perfect feel good aroma, the perfect colour, the perfect texture and the perfect flavouring in the eyes, mouths, hands, noses and even the ears of Trinidadian people (when they hear the name of course!) because it was designed based on studying their feelings. Now, we want River Salsa to go past the borders of the island of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) and sell abroad, as well as, move past craft markets here in Trinidad and Tobago and need your help.

Story

My quest for a fun Manufacturing Engineering Master’s Thesis while at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad & Tobago led me to Kansei Engineering (or Emotional Engineering). Kansei Engineering is simply a Japanese design process used to relate someone’s feelings to design elements.Now, while Brainstorming with my lecturer on what to emotionally design, I said, “let’s make a Trinidadian Styled Product”. Then my lecturer implied, “let’s make Hot Sauce since Trinidad has some of the hottest peppers in the World!” The problem was that we were both confused as to what was ‘Trinidadian style’ especially with respect to Packaging Design. I mean there are shapes recognizably Greek such as those arches in colosseums or even recognizably Indian such as Mehindi but what features are Trinidadian?

As per my master’s thesis, I found a way to use Kansei Engineering (Emotional Engineering) to develop a cultural style and applied it to develop hot sauce.

This is the process I used:

Now, the art of different cultures would show you that every culture has an ideology or inspiration behind their art. For example, Indian art focused on symbolic representation of spiritual states. Art is like the creation of a unique feature. Following this, Style is literally created through constant application of constant unique features ex. Greek motif on the arches or constant application of some design process variable. Ex Fruit Cake in Trinidad to the USA, in Trinidad we blend the fruits into the cake while in the USA the fruits are dumped whole.

For my master’s thesis methodology, I found out what cultural features inspired people of Trinidad to think about pepper using Emotional Engineering. Psychological surveys that measure perception of images of cultural features in Trinidad (foods, places, festivals, etc.) were handed to males and females of three (3) different age ranges from all the different regions of Trinidad. Hence, these features came like a unique art feature inspired by a concept – the thought of pepper. The design elements (shapes, colours, motifs, etc.) from the most frequent features quoted by the Trinidadian people would be used to style the packaging artwork. (style is the constant application of a feature).

In addition, I also got their perceptions of what styles of packaging material – label styles, closures and bottles they found attractive. I wanted to present a product in which Trinidadians found attractive.

The next problem was that yes Trinidad has some of the tastiest and hottest peppers in the world. One of them being the infamous Trinidad Moruga Scorpion. But there is such a thing as too much of a good thing – a lot of Trinidadians find that Scorpion pepper sauce is literally too hot! Hence, I wanted to create a style of pepper that was pleasant to all Trinidadian people – a bit of Inclusive design!

Using the same psychological survey method, I found out what culinary features such as tastes – spiciness level, flavors, aromas and textures of a hot sauce caused the psychological feeling of pleasantness among Trinidadians. I used the same sampling method above since it unbiasedly represented the entire population of Trinidad.

The most quoted attributes were blended to create the unique blend of pepper known as River Salsa. However, to get to these required, the hot sauce design process had to be manipulated:

To get the perfect spiciness level – I am able to control the spiciness level by manipulating volumes of Trinidadian Moruga Scorpion Pepper combined with a secret pepper blend.

To get the perfect colour – I add a controlled amount of natural fruits

To get the perfect texture – I manipulate the chopping and blending process

To get the perfect flavor – My process actually starts by doing flavor extraction on flavours that Trinidadian people prefer in their hot sauce such as culantro or Chadon Beni as it is called in Trinidad.

And that was the birth of ‘River Salsa’.

Why we need your pledge?

We have been hand bottling approximately 100 bottles a month in our spare time. Trinidad is a small country with a small competitive market but now, we want to grow, we want to produce more, sell abroad, sell on amazon. We want to have our own home-based manufacturing plant and need to buy machines and design a small place to bottle.



Why a goal of $5950.00USD



It covers the total basic costs of manufacturing equipment. (i.e. the bare necessities to have a T&T home-based, food-safe environment to manufacture hot sauce in a capacity that can allow profitable foreign export and sale)



The hot-sauce manufacture process is as follows:



Blending

Equipment Required: Cost + Shipping Cost

[ Food Processor: 44.99USD + 22USD for shipping to T&T]

[ Blenders (2): 187.98USD + 152.16 USD for shipping to T&T]

[ Fridge: 353.84 USD]



Packaging Material Rinsing

Equipment Required: Cost + Shipping Cost

[Rinser: 113.22USD + 120USD for shipping to T&T]



Filling

Equipment Required: Cost + Shipping Cost

[Filler: 361.38 USD + 640.00USD for shipping to T&T]



Capping

Equipment Required: Cost + Shipping Cost

[Capper: 53.84 USD + 86.00USD for shipping to T&T]



Labelling

Equipment Required: Cost + Shipping Cost

[Labeller: 177.90 USD + 248.00USD for shipping to T&T]



All this would occur in a backyard cabin area:



Prefab Cabin to Work in Backyard: [$1000USD + $1403.25 for

shipping to T&T]



Finally, initial material:


Bottles, Closures, Labels, Shrink Sleeves,
Raw peppers, Vinegar, Spices: [$985.45 USD]

What you’ll get for your support?


Pledge $10.00 or less without a reward because you believed in it. The Fuego Rosa brand thanks you.

Pledge $15.00 and you will receive our marketing stickers with the brand logo

Pledge $20.00 and you will receive our marketing bookmark with the brand logo

Pledge $25.00 and you will receive our marketing postcard with the brand logo

Pledge $40.00 or more and you will receive our marketing notebook with brand logo

Project Timeline

Covid-19 has delayed all the plans to start export production fundraising thus far. Hence, Oct 20th, 2020 is the new date for starting all our fundraising ventures since our lockdowns here in Trinidad is easing and Dec 31^st is the date for ending. Thus, after all fundraising ventures are done by Dec 31^st , 2020, equipment will be sourced and the first thing on my bucket-list for 2021 is to start my home-based manufacturing business.

Fuego Rosa (About the creator and brand)


Hi, I am Dillon the creator of River Salsa and the Fuego Rosa brand. I Did my MSc in Manufacturing Engineering and Management and BSc in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering both at the University of the West Indies. I’ve been Working in the Food and Beverage Industry for past Two (2) Years in the Quality Assurance. My previous experience was in Design Engineering.

Fuego Rosa or Pink Fire in English was chosen as my brand name because the goal is to develop Trinidadian styled products by studying the emotions of Trinidadian people. Pink symbolizes affection and the fire symbolizes burning – hence burning affection or the emotions that create wanting.

Thank you so much for your support :)