Saucy Beginnings
I have vivid memories as a kid when my dad made homemade BBQ sauce. At that point in my life, I was a pretty picky eater—ketchup on everything type. But one small taste of the smoky, yet sweet concoction that my dad had whipped up in our kitchen, and I was absolutely hooked! From that point forward, I became fascinated with everything homemade.
Fast forward about ten years later, and it’s the summer before my senior year in college. I had just landed my first full-time job. I actually had some money in my pocket! And you know the first place I went with that paycheck? The grocery store. I was on a mission to create my own homemade BBQ sauce. So I rounded up all of my ingredients, and on a hot June afternoon, I created my own Jack Daniels BBQ sauce…with the help of Google, of course. It was delicious! From that point forward during my senior year, I would expand my passion for cooking like never before. I developed a strong urgency for recipe exploration and culinary creation. It was only right that once I graduated from college and began my professional career, the passion only continued to grow. Only this time, it accelerated at a rapid rate.
I started my career as a civil engineer with a utility company in Harrisburg, PA. My Friday nights were spent binge-watching the Food Network, and my Saturdays were spent in my tiny kitchen developing new creative recipes. Everything from duck grilled cheese to bacon-wrapped lasagna—nothing was off-limits. But one item I always loved to tinker with was homemade BBQ Sauce. After visiting a local BBQ spot and being inspired by the array of sauce selections, I decided that I wanted to truly try something different. And so I began testing out a BBQ sauce that used Raspberry as its base. At that time, I didn’t even really like Raspberries! But the idea seemed unique. So I went for it. And on the first trial of the sauce, I am here to tell you, it was absolutely terrible. Possibly one of the worst sauces I have ever tasted.
But I knew there was potential. So for the next 2 months, I adjusted and added ingredients. Until one day, I coated some wings in my latest Raspberry BBQ sauce installments, took a bite, and my mouth sang. I had it. I was so thrilled about the outcome but was even more excited about sharing it with friends and family. So I bought some plastic bottles off of some random plastic wholesale account (Amazon wasn’t the Amazon of today), printed out some random funky label that I made on Microsoft Word, and shipped out samples. The feedback was incredible. It was being called the greatest sauce in their pantry! Talk about putting a battery in my back.
While all of this is occurring, I am scratching the entrepreneurial itch. I knew owning a business was in my future plans, but now I felt I had a product that would lead me towards actually moving forward with starting a business. The journey had begun. And over the next 3-4 years, I introduced a number of other sauces, including the #1 seller Pineapple Buffalo Sauce, a Mango-Based BBQ sauce, and Peach-Based BBQ Sauce. The “sauce story” was born out of a 900 square foot apartment in Harrisburg, PA. Those humble beginnings put me on an unforgettable entrepreneurial path that is still being forged today.