The Ethos
Easton Chilli was founded with sustainability, ethical ideals, and circular economics at its heart:
- for each product sold we make a donation to charity – since November 2020, over £1787 has been donated to the Trussell Trust in support of UK food banks. From 2020 to 2023, £1 was donated per item. From 2024, 10% of profit per item will be donated.
- additionally, 1% of online sales made via Stripe is donated to the Stripe Climate fund to fund carbon removal intiatives
- reused or recyclable shipping materials only – no new plastic is sourced for this purpose
- merchandise is typically printed on-demand which reduces waste, using the most ethical materials suitable for the product.
- we are continuously looking for ways to improve our products, making them more sustainable by sourcing ingredients that are produced locally or at a fairer price. Services like CrowdFarming make this easy and possible for small businesses.
- operating with transparency as much as possible, being open to questions and comment and publishing financial information annually. View the latest report here: Year in Review 2022
The Story
Hey there! I'm Rikki, and I run Easton Chilli. I started making chilli jam in my small kitchen in Easton around 2017. I never found anything I liked in the shops, so I developed my own recipe and started gifting every Christmas. During the pandemic I was on furlough from my job as a web developer at a travel company, so I had a lot of time to watch Netflix and explore my passion for cooking. During Lockdown 2 in November 2020 I ran out of Netflix and decided to start Easton Chilli and see where it went.
It's now 2024, and after three years of running Easton Chilli, I've made over 2000 jars of delicious chilli jam across 15 different recipes, I'm launching a range of fermented and fresh hot sauces, and I'm currently stocked in several actual stores! Until Christmas 2023, Easton Chilli was a side-project, taking about one day a week of my time. I'm now doing it full time and seeing what happens! We'll see what the rest of the year brings!
If you've got any questions or feedback - just send me a message. And I'll get back to you soon!
Frequently asked
How spicy are your products?
Tolerance to chilli heat is very individual! Easton Chilli products are rated out of 5 on heat, trying to make a scale that works for regular people (i.e. people who don't have hot sauce on everything! :) )
- 0/5 - No heat here. Possibly suitable for your newborn baby.
- 1/5 - Just a hint. If you like your spice, you probably think this is nothing.
- 2/5 - A bit of zing. Everyone should be able to enjoy this level of heat, whether you're a regular folk or a chilli fiend. Most of our products are aimed at this level.
- 3/5 - It's heating up. Probably getting a little spicy for the regular folk now, definitely too spicy for a newborn baby.
- 4/5 - Now we're talking! You might talk your pal into trying this once, but they might need a glass of milk, and they might not speak to you for a while.
- 5/5 - Everything that's way too spicy for a regular person.
Here are some rough equivalences in heat.
- Heinz Tomato Ketchup = Easton Chilli 0/5
- Nando's Medium Peri Peri = Easton Chilli 2/5
- That chilli sauce at your local kebab shop = probably Easton Chilli 3/5
- Chilli Daddy's 4 = Easton Chilli 5/5
How does delivery work?
We offer a selection of delivery services depending on your location and order. Choose from them at the checkout.
- Local delivery (Easton and nearby): FREE
- Royal Mail 2nd Class (UK, NI, GG, JE, IM): £4
- Orders weighing more than 2kg (5+ jars): £7.50
- Orders valued £30 or more: FREE!
All orders should be with you within 3-5 working days from when you order (it might be a little longer than this sometimes, we'll be in touch if so).
Large orders (10+ jars) please get in touch so we can make special arrangements.
International orders are available depending on what the customs regulations are of your country. Please get in touch before you place your order to confirm whether we can ship to your country.
Where are your products made?
I started making everything in my home kitchen in Easton! This was great until Christmas 2023 when everyone wanted a jar of chilli jam, In January 2024 I started renting a professional kitchen over in Brislington to make all the products. At some point I hope to return production to Easton!
My t-shirts are printed by the lovely Live Ink Co, based in Bedminster in Bristol.
Sustainability etc?
Of course. Sustainability is important to Easton Chilli and it's considered in all parts of the business.
Packaging
We try to reuse waste materials in our packaging, so if someone has delivered bubble wrap to us, or we have a perfectly sized Amazon box lying around, we might use them for your order. Better to reuse it than throw it away to landfill!
All new packaging that we source is plastic-free and recyclable, and we prefer to buy cardboard or recycled materials where possible. Sometimes we use corn-starch mailer bags.
Any waste cardboard that we can't use gets shredded and put into our compost heap, along with our waste vegetable scraps from jam cooking. The worms love this arrangement.
Product
We try to source all our ingredients "loose" and prefer local and low-plastic companies.
We use preserving techniques like lacto-fermentation to extend the shelf life of some of our ingredients, for example we can buy in a few kg of bird's eye chillies and keep using them for months under the right conditions.
The old packaging of our jars is designed to be removed - it's just a bit of string and card. The idea is that you're more likely to reuse a jar if you don't have to spend ages washing off the sticker that's on it. Our new packaging is paper based and biodegradable - no plastic.
We currently use plastic tamper seals on our 150ml hot sauce bottles, and plastic lids; we are working towards using a compostable tamper seals but the lids will probably be plastic as long as we use this type of bottle.
Unfortunately due to UK Food Safety regulations, we are not allowed to re-use any glass destined to be a "packaged product" i.e. a jar of jam or a bottle of sauce that is sold to a consumer. We have to use new jars and lids for each product. If this weren't the case we'd love to have a closed-loop return and reuse system in place, and we'd be up for working with other producers to standardise on our packaging to make it more viable.
Delivery
We've partnered with Zedify to deliver some of our packages in Bristol. Their fleet of electric cargo bikes means their deliveries within BS1-16 are low-carbon-emitting.
Delivery to the rest of the UK is done using Royal Mail and other couriers like APC and DPD, many of which are working to reduce their carbon emissions.