Membership
What €150 a year actually buys.
The European Heat Council is an industry body and a commercial operation, because the problems need both. Representation alone does not solve shipping. A warehouse alone does not get us into the room with regulators.
So it is built as two things. An association that defines what craft hot sauce is, represents the category where rules get written, and counts us. And a company that moves bottles. Your membership pays for the first. The second is priced separately, and you are never obliged to use it.
€150 a year. Same price for everyone. Invoiced once the Council legally exists, and not before.
What the dues buy
The Craft Mark on your bottle.
A collective mark, owned by the Council, that a supermarket cannot help itself to. “Craft” has no definition in hot sauce today, which is why anyone can print it on forty thousand litres. We define it across Europe on three tests, then defend it.
Your voice where the rules get written.
Germany’s federal risk institute has a recommendation on file that would put a warning label and a child-safe cap on a jalapeño sauce. Nobody in that process makes hot sauce. Two letters are drafted and waiting for names: one to the BfR on the evidence, one to the BMEL offering a heat scale the industry writes itself.
A say in what the Council does next.
Producers and growers vote. What the standard says, what the Mark requires, what gets argued for first: members settle it, and the register of who those members are is the thing that makes the Council an authority rather than three people with a website.
What they do not buy
The Mark is not registered yet. A collective mark takes four to six months from filing when nobody opposes it, so it goes on bottles when it is registered and not before. You are paying for it to exist, not for it to already exist.
Storage, fulfilment, shipping rates, group purchasing and compliance services are not included in the €150 and never will be. They sit in the trading company, they are priced on their own terms, and membership is not a condition of buying them. Nor are they a condition of membership. A maker who joins and never sends a bottle to the depot has lost nothing.
And entry to the European Hot Sauce Awards stays open to everyone, member or not. Judging is never for sale.
What the Council is building
None of this starts for at least six months. The depot has to be sized before anything can be quoted, and it can only be sized from real numbers.
- One European depot. Send stock on the Council’s freight rate, and a wholesaler in Zagreb or a shopper in Naples can order it without you learning how to export.
- One registration instead of twenty-seven. The Council carries the packaging obligation and the authorised representative in each market, which is what PPWR now demands of anyone shipping across a border.
- Pooled shipping, in and out. A single bottle to Stockholm can carry €12 to €20 of postage today. Out of a shared depot it does not.
- Group rates on the things every maker buys alone: bottles, caps, labels, EPR registration, product liability cover.
- The trade catalogue. A buyer takes one pallet, one invoice and one supplier covering thirty makers. They will not do that thirty times over.
The mechanism is set out on how the depot works. Storage is quoted at €0.70 per bottle per year. The fulfilment and country-coverage figures are being confirmed with logistics and compliance providers directly, rather than published as placeholders.
What already works
In twelve weeks the Council put €70,000 of press behind 29 independent makers, across 45 outlets in 16 countries. National newspapers, regional TV and radio, food press across Europe. Not one of those makers wrote a release. Not one of them paid anything for it.
In 2027 the European Hot Sauce Awards move into a single room in Berlin, supported by visitBerlin: 150 judges over two days, drawn from the European trade press, the food press, and the buyers who decide what gets listed on a shelf. A medal awarded where nobody watched is a sticker. One awarded in front of buyers and press is a listing and an article.
Who can join
Independent hot sauce producers and chilli growers based in Europe, in active distribution or in pre-launch with real small-batch production. No volume floor. Sole proprietors, partnerships and registered businesses all welcome. Producers and growers vote, and they are the ones who carry the Mark.
The trade around the makers, retailers, co-packers, bottle and label suppliers, logistics, can join as associates. Associates get the catalogue and introductions, not the Mark and not a vote on the terms they trade with us on. That fee is still being set and you will see it before anything is invoiced.
How to join
The form asks who you are, what you make, and where you stand on the €150. It takes a few minutes and saves every answer as you give it, so you can stop and come back.