Sauce North started, like a lot of good things, around a family table. I'd been making sauces to complement family meals since the 1980s, and our journey with hot sauce really began with a recipe our good friends Stan and Kristi brought back from Panama. After trying to recreate that Aji Chombo–style sauce — and never quite making enough to last the year — we devoured it on everything: eggs at breakfast, Bloody Marys, grilled meats and veggies on summer evenings.
So in the spring of 2019 we set out to grow our own Minnesota pepper crop, with heritage seeds ordered from one of the best in the business. That first proper harvest became our original line of sauces, bottled up and ready to share.
From the Kingdom of Mourne
I grew up in the outstanding natural beauty of the Kingdom of Mourne in the North of Ireland, where my parents taught me to appreciate nature. My first earnings, age nine or ten, came from selling plants I'd grown from cuttings under my grandmother's instruction. By thirteen I was working in a local restaurant kitchen — washing dishes first, later cooking.
So I grew up comfortable with growing and cooking things, and lucky enough to take fresh, local food a little for granted.
A path more aligned with the future
After three decades making money for corporate shareholders, I realized it was time to find a path more aligned with the future of the planet my children are growing up on. Sauce North began as a fun little side hustle and a way to learn the food business from the ground up — and to put my passion for food to good use.
Why regenerative agriculture
Our food system is under strain. A reliance on chemical agriculture is degrading soils and harming the insects we need to pollinate crops, while many farmers are caught in a cycle of debt and commodity pricing. There's an urgent need for change.
We can't fix all of that with hot sauce. But we can grow and source peppers from farmers who steward their soil, and we can give back. Sauce North is a 1% for the Planet company, donating at least 1% of sales to regenerative agriculture and food-system projects.
Seed to sauce
Everything we make is done by hand in our home kitchen on Stillwater's South Hill — which is why it takes time to get right, and why our returning customers keep coming back. We use our own homegrown #seedtosauce peppers alongside crops grown specifically for us, or personally sourced from local farmers. Peppers are vine-ripened, hand-picked, fermented in sea salt, and simmered slowly. No chemicals or weird stuff, ever.
Farmers stewarding their soil. Consumers choosing consciously what they buy and where it comes from. That's the world we want to be part of — one bottle at a time.