In late 2017, my expat friend lamented over video chat about some of the things he missed most about the United States, one of which being Zaxby’s Insane Sauce. Half-jokingly I offered to mail him some, but his reaction was too strong to ignore. Thus began my journey into shipping condiments to Germany.

Because I’m lazy, I tabled this quest for a few months (holiday season and all that). Once I was able to recoup and remember my promise, I needed to determine what was required of me to get my friend his beloved chicken sauce. I narrowed my mission down to accomplishing 3 tasks:

1.	Buy a bulk amount of Insane Sauce
2.	Package the Insane Sauce for international transit
3.	Mail the Insane Sauce for a reasonable amount

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Buy a bulk amount of Insane Sauce

After doing a fair amount of research, I found that the largest container of sauce you can buy from a Zaxby’s Restaurant is 16oz, which is included in their catering offerings found under “Platterz”. I did not, however, wish to place a catering order for only sauce, so I decided to try my luck in-store.

While ordering, I asked what the largest amount I could purchase was, and once 16oz was confirmed I bought 4, totaling to 64oz of Insane Sauce. At $3.79 each, it turned out to be a pretty good deal versus buying the individual sauce packages.

With goods in hand, my next task was to find a good way to package this stuff.

Package the Insane Sauce

Many problems crossed my mind while thinking of ways to package the Insane Sauce. First, the packaging that the Insane Sauce came in was unsuitable due to it being a fairly non-rigid, disposable plastic container with a lid that did not make an air-tight seal. Second, seeing as the package was most definitely going to be flown to its destination, pressure changes would need to be taken into consideration. Third, Insane Sauce is a liquid, meaning if it did burst it would turn the package into a soggy, disgusting mess, so extra care would need to be taken to wrap the contents appropriately.

My first attempt at boxing it up was to use some gallon-sized ziplock bags, adding layers to make the sauce more durable in transit. This idea was scrapped due to the fact that I could not get enough air out of the ziplock baggies.

At this point the best way to seal the goods would be to procure a vacuum sealer. A co-worker was generous enough to lend me his, and to my surprise it did a very good job.

From here, the process bleeds into step three, as I decided to purchase my boxes from the post office, but in future trials I will probably get the box from somewhere else for cheaper. I decided to first package the box in a ReadyPost 10.5” x 16” cusion mailer, but the teller was kind enough to tell me his worries on shipping a liquid package internationally with only that as protection. I then additionally put it in an approximately 12” x 20” x 3” box. The teller kindly didn’t charge me for the ReadyPost mailer.

Mailing the Insane Sauce

Now we get to the good stuff: paperwork and payment. In order to ship things larger than a pound, you’ll need to fill out a customs form. I filled out form 2976-R. It’s worth mentioning that I made about 3 round trips to the counter to get all my questions answered and get my package to a deliverable state, between forms, packaging, then packaging again, so hopefully this will save you a couple of those trips.

A concern with shipping liquids is that there’s an extra surcharge involved and maybe a line of questioning. The post office also doesn’t do a great job of distinguishing types of things you should be wary of shipping. When asked what I was sending, I was given a Yes/No question that basically ammounted to asking me: “Does this package contain liquids, batteries, explosives, or hazardous materials?” The answer was yes, but it worried me because the other three things seemed very bad and I just wanted to mail hot sauce. The teller didn’t really seem concerned, and just asked what it was and what it was for, then we carried on.

With the paperwork done, the next hurdle to clear was cost. Though I started with about 64oz of sauce, mistakes in deciding how to seal the sauce for transit lowered me to ~60oz. My package measured out to be just shy of 4 pounds, which the teller told me I would be saving quite a bit of money, so aim for either less than 4 pounds or just send a whole lot. The teller informed me I would be paying $56.14, (which includes tax and the $2.99 for the box). A hefty sum, but a worthy one for a noble cause. This charge was for Priority Mail shipping for 6 - 10 business days. I may have explored cheaper options, but I feel I didn’t want to have the package sitting around too long or being roughed up. It also fortunately also included tracking!

Reaping the rewards

Just as it said, the sauce made it to Berlin in just over a week. My ecstatic friend was kind enough to take lots of pictures and even gave me the measurements of what he was able to salvage. Of the original 64oz, a total of 55oz were recovered.

There are a few ways to optimize this process now that I’ve gone through it. The first is to probably get a used box elsewhere instead of buying a new one. I may also save money if I ship the sauce in much larger bulk (perhaps using a 20 pound limit box instead of a 4 pound limit box). It’s also possible to complete the customs forms online, so doing that ahead of time would save me time spent in the Post Office. There may also be cheaper shipping options outside of USPS. In the end, though, I had a happy friend, so I can’t really ask for much more. Total cost ended up being $15.16 for sauce and $56.14 for shipping, so as long as I can beat $71.30 total, or roughly $1.30 per ounce of sauce, I’m making progress!