Spicing up the South Shore
We moved to the suburbs in the summer of 2019, after living in Boston for more than a decade.
Finally, we had a yard and (literal) room to grow! It was time to flex our previously unused green thumbs.
Just a few months later, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and we suddenly had much more time to spend at home. In the spring of 2020, we began the germination process on a folding table in our kitchen with tons of hot pepper varieties before transplanting them outside. While we both worked our day jobs in the tech industry, Kevin began using his experience brewing beer and his knowledge of fermentation to make hot sauces—sharing batches with friends and family. Shannon saw the opportunity for a new business.
Feedback from those first batches was incredible! As more and more people tried our sauces, we kept hearing, “This is amazing, are you going to sell it?”
Burke’s Hot Sauce was off and running. We grew from a home-kitchen hobby to a brand within just a few months, researching, developing our business plan, and launching our social media presence. Kevin got to work studying the best methods for developing flavor and consistency, using software to track every little detail of the batches. This year, we have 100 pepper plants growing in our backyard and we’ve stepped up production. At our first farmers market, we completely sold out!
When it comes to hot sauce, there are two main categories: the giant, household name brands and very small craft makers. Most big hot-sauce makers have limited offerings—a consistent product but little flavor variation. With small brands, the world of flavor opens up. They include flavors and ingredients from all over the world and levels of spice that add anything from a little kick all the way to heat that would intimidate even the toughest palates. We see an opportunity to make Burke’s Hot Sauce a hybrid of both: a larger brand with the same commitment to variety and quality flavor as a micro-batch maker.