A customer wrote in this week with a fair question: "Are all of your products made in small batches, or just some of them?" It is a fair question because the phrase gets printed on a lot of labels, ours included, and it rarely comes with an explanation. So here is the full answer.
The short answer
Yes. Every product we sell is made in small batches, by hand, in Springtown, Texas. That includes the lotions, the soaps, the lip balms, the whipped balms and creams, the shampoo and lotion bars, and the tallow itself. Nothing in our lineup comes off a production line or out of a contract manufacturer's tank.
Here is the part most brands leave out. We ship a lot of jars, more some weeks than we would have believed possible a year ago. We get there not by making bigger batches but by making more of them. A busy lotion day is not one enormous vat. It is the same small run, repeated by the same people from start to finish, over and over. That distinction is the whole reason the phrase means anything.
What "small batch" means on our floor
Every morning starts with a production sheet built from the orders that came in. It lists what needs to be made that day, product by product. The team works down the sheet in runs small enough that one person can mix, watch, and finish a batch without walking away from it. Each run is poured or filled by hand, capped by hand, and labeled by hand. If something is off, a scent that is not reading right or a texture that is not setting the way it should, it is caught at the size of a single batch and never reaches a jar.
That last point is the practical reason we work this way. In a small run, the person making it is also the quality control. Nothing is out of sight inside a machine.
Line by line
Lotion
Our lotions are made in small runs, one at a time. The water base is heated fresh for that run, the tallow and oils are brought to temperature separately, and the two are combined and whipped in a batch small enough to jar by hand the same day. Magnesium Tallow Lotion, the Clear Skin and Serbian Clay formulas, and the regular unscented lotion are all made this way. The 2oz jars in the Tallow Lotion Sampler Pack come from the same runs as the 16oz jars. There is no separate sampler formula.
Soap
Our soap is cold-process, which means the batch is mixed, poured into molds, and then left alone. Each run fills a small set of molds. The bars are cut by hand once they are firm and then cured on racks for several weeks before they are wrapped. Curing cannot be rushed, so the bar you buy today was poured well before you ordered it and has been sitting quietly in Springtown waiting for you.
Lip balm
Lip balm is made in the smallest runs of anything we sell. A batch is melted, taken off the heat, and the flavor or essential oil is stirred in at the end so it does not cook off. Then the tubes are filled by hand, a handful at a time, and left to set before they are capped. This is also part of why our lip balm feels firmer than a drugstore stick. We are not adding the softeners a machine needs to fill a thousand tubes a minute. There is more on that in How to Use Tallow Lip Balm.
Whipped balms and creams
The 4oz whipped balms and 2oz creams are whipped in small runs and jarred straight off the whisk while the texture is at its best. Because they are pure fat with no water in them, they are the most sensitive to heat, which is also why they can arrive soft in summer. That is normal, and it is covered in Did Your Tallow Arrive Melted?.
The tallow itself
Every one of these products starts with the same ingredient, and it is made in small batches too. Our tallow comes from cattle raised or processed by Parker County Beef Company, our parent ranch, and is slow-rendered at our facility in Springtown. We are not buying drums of commodity tallow of unknown origin. That matters more than it sounds, and we wrote about why in Tallow Soap Made in the USA.
Why we make it this way
- Freshness. Because the production sheet is built from real orders, lotions, balms, and lip balm are made close to when they ship. Nothing sits in a warehouse for months waiting to be sold.
- Every batch gets looked at. A small run is checked by a person at every step: color, scent, texture, fill. A problem is the size of one batch, not one week's inventory.
- Essential oils behave better in small runs. We scent with essential oils only, and they are added at the end, off the heat, weighed for that batch. In a large run the oil either cooks off or has to be added heavily to survive. Small runs let us use a lighter hand and keep the scent honest. See Why Our Scents Are Subtle.
- We can follow demand. When the season shifts toward one formula, the production sheet shifts with it the same day. We do not have to guess months ahead and pour a giant batch of the wrong thing.
What it means for you
Small batches come with one honest trade-off: slight variation. Two jars of the same lotion made on different days may be a shade apart in color. A soap bar may smell a little stronger or a little softer than the last one you had. Whipped balm may be a touch lighter or denser depending on the room the day it was whipped. None of that is a defect. It is what hand-made looks like when the ingredients are plants and rendered fat rather than standardized lab inputs. The ingredient list and the way the product works on your skin do not change.
If something ever does seem genuinely wrong, a jar that separated or a scent that is not what the label says, we want to know. We can trace it back to a single run and fix it. Reply to your order email or write to us and a person will answer.
Common questions
Are all Texas Tallow products made in small batches?
Yes. Every product, every run. Lotions, soaps, lip balms, balms, creams, shampoo and lotion bars, and the tallow itself are all made by hand in small batches in Springtown, Texas.
Do you use a contract manufacturer for any product?
No. Everything is made by our own team at our own facility. We do not outsource any product or any step of the process.
Where are Texas Tallow products made?
Springtown, Texas. Texas Tallow Products is the skincare division of Parker County Beef Company, and the tallow is rendered at our facility there.
Why does this jar look or smell a little different from my last one?
Because it came from a different small batch. Essential oils and rendered fat vary a little from run to run, so slight differences in color, scent strength, and texture are normal. If a product seems genuinely off, contact us and we will make it right.
Where to start
If you want to see the difference for yourself, the Tallow Lotion Sampler Pack has a 2oz jar of each lotion formula, and the Tallow Soap Sampler 9 Pack covers the bars. For how to use everything once it arrives, read Start Here: How to Use Every Texas Tallow Product.