We recently bought some barbecue sauce whose label proudly announces it’s from a “small batch”. Sounds great, right? I imagine some bearded guy in coveralls using a wooden paddle to stir a big vat of sauce with great care and attention. But that’s obviously not the case.
So what does “small batch” even mean, then? And how big is a small batch relative to a normal batch? Is there an ISO standard for batch sizes? I know it’s an innocuous marketing claim designed to conjure up an image in buyers’ minds, but the more I think about it the more irritating it is because of its vagueness. At least “Artisan-Style” conveys a certain idea of what you might expect flavour-wise. Small Batch means nothing unless you back it up with an explanation (which is lacking here).
