What Does "Small Batch" Really Mean?

The other morning, while peeling a pile of beetroot fresh from the Perth markets — the kind of firm, earthy, sweet root veg that only turns up once the weather cools — we got thinking about a word we use on almost every label: small batch.

Small Batch From The Beginning

From the very start, small batch was one of our guiding principles — handmade condiments, preserves and sauces, cooked by hand, in a pot, in genuinely small quantities, using minimally processed, whole ingredients rather than anything you'd find on an ultra-processed label.

Now that The Mulberry Pig has grown here in Perth, we've brought in a bit of machine help to get through the prep work — years of dicing, slicing and stirring by hand will do that. A food processor handles most of the hard graft now, and a stick blender makes sure our sauces turn out silky smooth. Without them, our condiments would look very different, and cost a lot more. Time, as they say, is money.

Cooking In Batches

Even with that help, everything is still cooked in our trusty 50L stainless steel pots. They're big — each one takes up four burners — but even they have their limits.

You can't just fill them to the top and expect the same result (trust us, we tried). After plenty of trial and error, we found the sweet spot: around 15kg of ingredients per batch, sometimes less for jams and marmalades, at 2–3kg. That's the amount that gets the texture, flavour and consistency we set out to achieve all those years ago.

So, Are We Still Small Batch?

A single batch of relish or jam gives us anywhere from 20 to 100 jars. Surely that still counts as small batch — but where's the line? Medium batch? Should batch size even be on the label?

We did a bit of digging, and the answers were vague at best. "Small batch" can mean anything from a few kilos to twenty times that — and yes, even some big supermarket condiment brands slap the label on. Which tells you the term isn't really regulated at all.

What "Small Batch" Means To Us

So maybe small batch really is in the eye of the beholder. For us, it comes down to one thing: knowing the person making the product is actually involved — tasting, stirring, adjusting, making sure it turns out right, every time.

We've always followed one rule from our years in professional kitchens: if you wouldn't be happy serving it to your mum, you shouldn't serve it at all. That's why everything we make is small batch — so we can get the flavour, texture and consistency right, every single time.

An Update: Cooking Even Smaller

Since first writing this, we've scaled things back even further. Our 50L pots have been swapped for smaller 20L pans, so each batch now yields fewer jars — but gives us even tighter control over flavour and texture.

Pickles come out crunchier, sauces thicker, jams set quicker, and chutneys finish sooner. In the world of condiments, less time in the pot generally means bigger, bolder flavour — and that, we think, is what really sets small batch cooking apart from mass production.

This slower, more thoughtful way of working means we can experiment with seasonal ingredients and stay hands-on for every single batch. It feels like we've come full circle, back to why we started The Mulberry Pig in the first place: to make something genuinely tasty, by hand, with love.

And next time you're at a farmers market, ask whether the person behind the stall actually made what they're selling.