Newks Hot Sauce is a company based out of Portland, Oregon that started right at the end of 2019, before the pandemic shook the world.  Jake Newcomb (hence the name NEWKS), started a Kickstarter campaign to get the company off the ground. The humble goal of $3,000 was hit within 24 hours, and Newcomb was able to take those funds to purchase a business license, sign up for an acidified food processor license, get business insurance, buy cooking equipment, and all the other miscellaneous startup costs. 

Tim Myers of Hot Heads Official has always loved to create. From drawing in his younger years to crafting his line of hot sauces, Tim has always shown a knack for creativity.

I have memories of getting gifts from my friends of hot sauce from all their travels, dragging my friends to hot sauce conventions so we can try them all day long, and embarrassing my friends as I take my travel size sauces out of my purse when the restaurant didn’t have any.

Craft Hot Sauce features Rick DeSimone. Quarantine Hot Sauce was founded mid-pandemic when he stumbled upon a hot sauce making kit that needed an upgrade.

Debra Sandler is a doer. She is a perfect example of someone with high ambitions who has never forgotten her family and her roots. With over 30 years of experience in corporate America, she has now turned her focus to Bazodee, a Caribbean-inspired, natural, family-driven line of pepper sauces and marinades.

As I was growing up, I would visit family in Trinidad and Tobago and enjoy all the delicacies prepared by my grandma. One of which was a pepper sauce unique to my family.

Laura and Jared of Poor Devil Pepper Company share their journey with starting their fermented hot sauce company, collaborating with artists, sourcing from local farmers, and their zero waste approach.

The Kitchen Garden is a 45-acre organic specialty vegetable farm located in Sunderland, Massachusetts. Tim Wilcox and Caroline Pam started the farm in 2006 after meeting at the Union Square Greenmarket in New York City in 2003, where they both worked as market managers.

Town Tine Hot Sauce was created by Bernard King and Eibhlín Cooke in the summer of 2020 and was a product of their keen interest in hot sauce, fermented foods and, in reality, boredom as a result of the Covid-19 restrictions that were in place in Ireland at the time. Although both parties had loved hot sauce prior to making their first batch, neither had ever thought that they would ever be making and selling it in their local community and beyond.