Lessons from Starting a Hot Sauce Business
“You will try on many hats. Most of them will not work. But some will. Forgive yourself for the hats that did not fit. Chalk those up to you doing your best at the time.” – Louis Grace
One of my best friends, Louis—also known nationwide as the Austin marathon Jean King—recently made a blog post which mentioned the importance of trying on many hats, and if that hat doesn’t fit, to chalk it up to doing your best at the time.
This got me thinking about a “hat” I tried on two years ago—starting a business. These are the lessons I learned.
Starting A Hot Sauce Company
In 2023, my wife, her mother, and I launched a hot sauce business called “Mama Mimi Egypt”, using a recipe her mother has had for years going back to when they lived in Cairo, Egypt.
We called the hot sauce “Tangy Blaze Sauce” and started with a small batch of 12 bottles with a simple label that I sold to a couple local restaurants, and once to random bar goers.
Before long our bottles were being stocked or served in nine grocery stores, convenience stores, and restaurants in Columbus, Ohio and Fort Collins, Colorado.
We were far from crushing it, but it was a lot of fun. Until it wasn’t. More on that later.
Buff Barn Creamery
Ironically, about the same time, Louis—who I will now solely refer to as Jean King—and I had plans to start a protein ice cream company called Buff Barn Creamery.
Each flavor would have a ripped cartoon farm animal. It was the kind of ice cream we imagined Jordan Peterson might eat while on a Joe Rogan episode.
In retrospect, starting two completely unrelated food companies at the same time on top of my 9-5 job was insane.
Despite Jean King and I’s best efforts—and too many pints of protein ice cream consumed—we ultimately decided to shut it down.
One year later, Jean King is breathing new life into Buff Barn Creamery.
From a look at his business plan, I think it has a chance.
And he’s learning from the mistakes we made during our first go around.
Financials: Before, we floundering about mixing fat free evaporated milk, guar gum, and greek yogurt like barnyard chickens with their heads cut off. On the bright side, at least we were finally getting some cardio? Jean King has created an entire financial plan with a path to profitability.
Path To Scoop #1: Our whole business idea was to sell protein ice cream. And yet we didn’t have any ice cream to sell. The path to selling scoop #1 without burning through a ton of cash is a major priority, and Jean King has a gameplan.
Ghost Kitchen: Goodbye to cupboards filled with paper ice cream containers! Hello ghost kitchen! With my limited understanding of food packing law, we needed a ghost kitchen to sell a food product as a startup. As an added bonus my parents won’t ask if they’ll get their ice cream maker back.
His excitement was contagious and actually got me excited to take a second look at my experience with Mama Mimi Egypt.
Putting The Hot Sauce ‘On Ice’
Jean King has been a great friend and life for life and spirituality since we met in Austin in 2020.
One day I told him of our plans to shut down the hot sauce business. Between working a 9-5 job and planning a wedding, running a hot sauce business just didn’t make it onto the priority list.
He was understanding, but recommended that I put the business on “ice”—temporarily postpone the business to minimize costs without shutting it down completely.
Much like I would with a Busch latte before a darty with the boys, I put the business on ice.
I closed the Shopify store, social media accounts, Canva subscription, and sold the remaining hot sauces until we sold out.
We also stopped reaching out to retailers to renew their orders so we wouldn’t have to produce any more bottles.
Things That I Hated
My time away from Mama Mimi Egypt gave me time to think deeply about what I hated about the business.
Production: My wife and her mother handled all the production and bottling, and they did a fantastic job. The struggle was communicating how much hot sauce we needed to fulfill orders, with enough leftover for future orders.
Supply Levels: Although we made our hot sauce in batches, maintaining appropriate levels of supplies for each production run was a balancing act. Making sure we had enough ingredients, bottles, labels, shrink wrap, boxes and bubble wrap became a constant challenge—with many trips with Staples.
Packing & Shipping: If you’d stepped into my apartment, you’d have thought you walked into a warehouse. I had cardboard boxes, packing peanuts, packing tape, and labels everywhere. Even though the packing process became easy with time, there always seemed to be a hiccup that slowed the process down.
Farmers Markets: It was great to see people’s reactions to the hot sauce. But on occasion no one would visit our booth, and it felt like a complete waste of time and money.
Business Partners: My wife and I learned that we prefer being romantic partners, rather than business partners. There are many examples of couples who do a great job balancing a business together, but we enjoy spending quality time with each other, without the stress of a shared business.
Things That I Loved
Now the good stuff. The things that I absolutely loved about our hot sauce business—there were a lot.
Selling: My current day job is in sales at a software startup, which I absolutely love. SPIN Selling was one one of my favorite books growing up, and I’ve always had a passion for sales which translated well into the business. I built a CRM with Notion. I loved cold calling business, and visiting restaurants and retailers to learn about their business.
Giving Samples: We primarily sold to everyday consumers by giving out samples—mostly walking around the tailgates before an Ohio State football game. Not scalable, but a lot of fun. Nothing compared to watching a tailgater’s face go from intrigue, to contemplation, followed by satisfaction at the unique flavor.
Talking To Customers: I always got a kick out of talking to customers. It didn’t matter whether it was a retailer who stocked our hot sauce, a restaurant owner talking about the dishes they planned to use it with, or a boisterous buckeye fan raving about the sauce. I loved every moment.
Fast forward to now, January 25, 2025, and it’s been 12 months since we sold the last bottle of our most recent small batch of hot sauce.
Lessons Learned
Efficient vs. Effective: I was efficient, doing a lot of things for the business, but they weren’t necessarily the things that were getting us closer to our goal of being profitable and paying ourselves a salary.
Systems: The biggest areas I should have systematized is production by finding a co-packer and the fulfillment of online orders with a 3PL. With those processes automated, I could have focused on my favorite part: selling.
“Failure” Is Learning: Shipping snafus, recipe creation, and countless other rookie mistakes were foolish—but they weren’t “failures” in a sense that it crushed either business financially. Many lessons learned with Buff Barn Creamery made Mama Mimi Egypt more successful. And vice versa.
Find Your Tribe: Entrepreneurship is hard. You don’t always need a co-founder. Nor do you need like minded people on their own entrepreneurial journey to bounce ideas off of. But it certainly makes things easier. I’d highly recommend it.
Sell Your First Unit ASAP: As mentioned, Jean King and I never sold a single scoop of Buff Barn protein ice cream. As a result, we lost motivation. We also missed out on something even more important: feedback from a paying customer.
Start Small: Mama Mimi Egypt started with a batch of 12 bottles. It cost about $30 and a week to make. I highly recommend keeping your expenses as low as possible when validating your product. If the hot sauce didn’t sell, I’d have just given it as a gift to friends.
Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Throughout this whole process, I was working my 9-5 day job. A 2014 study found that entrepreneurs who don’t leave their job right away are 33% less likely to fail. By not quitting my day job, I had to work long hours. But I didn’t sweat the small stuff. It was the best strategic decision I made.
Conclusion
To bring it back to Jean King’s original blog post: we do the right thing at the right time as we know it.
When we put Mama Mimi Egypt on ice, that was the best thing to do at the time.
Now, a year later I’ve had enough time to think through what I learned from that, and figure out what I’d do differently in a future venture.
My advice to you: Get out there and build cool things. But don’t quit your day job.
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