SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
FEBRUARY 2018
Usually when you hear people these days use that old Shakespeare line “what’s in a name?” from Romeo and Juliet they’re referring to the fact that brand names don’t really matter in an ever-evolving consumer culture like ours. The store brand is always cheaper and the difference in quality negligible, right? We probably all have a friend who prefers no name cola with their Captain Morgan – no ice. But in a market where your goal is to establish yourself as a viable third option on the grocery store shelf and heat things up literally, a name says a lot. Drew Stevens, the co-owner of Pepper North Artisan Foods, handcrafts delicious gourmet hot pepper products and for him the goal is to completely set his super-hot sauces apart from “your traditional one-name brands like Tabasco and Frank’s.” Pepper North’s five hot sauces – Stargazer, Momento de Muerte, No Joke, Solar Flare, and Blueberry Plague – fall in the “medium to pretty extreme range; really a higher caliber than the big brands,” Drew said. These award winning hot sauces and three condiments – Heart of Aztlan BBQ Sauce, Hive Mind Hot Money Mustard, and Afterglow Hot Pepper Jelly – are all natural, free from added preservatives, gluten free, have won 22 industry awards and can be found in over 250 stores across Ontario and beyond.
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • FEBRUARY 2018
By David MacDonald S ince he was a teenager, Drew Stevens has had a green thumb. He and his brother grew hot peppers in their backyard just as “ghost peppers came on the scene about 20 years ago,” he recalled. “Ghost peppers really got us into the more super-hot peppers. As time went on there were always new, hotter peppers – but we had a problem.” Even though Drew resided in Oshawa, part of Ontario’s fruitful Greater Golden Horseshoe, he was reliant on online vendors in Australia, the U.K., and the U.S.A. for non-generic pepper seeds. “After we grew some of the more rare varieties, we decided to build a modest website and sell seeds over the internet. We started off growing about 50 plants. In the fall we harvested all the peppers and took out the seeds, dried them, packaged them, and sold them. It didn’t take long before we got bigger.” Their next harvest was 200 plants. Then 300. “It was after one of the bigger harvests years later that my wife Ana and I decided to experiment with hot sauces. Our first hot sauce was our No Joke “Original Recipe with Ghost Peppers” hot sauce, which is still my favourite. We really experimented with it a lot at first, tested it on friends and family, switched-up the ingredients, and used different quantities of vinegars,” he said. “It was after one of the bigger harvests years later that my wife Ana and I decided to experiment with hot sauces.” “Once we had a recipe that everyone seemed to like,” Drew continued, “we started doing local farmers markets in 2013 to rave reviews from cus- tomers and fellow hot sauce lovers. I remember the first farmers market we did our first daughter was about one years old and people really loved seeing a young family giving it a go.” The family-run aspect of Pepper North is very important to Drew. “We are still a family business five years later; there’s me and my wife, we’re the owners. I do more of the creative and production side and she handles more of the business side, so contacting customers, promoting the business, maintaining current accounts, account- ing, all that.” “My brother actually does all our labels, which is really cool because we get to brainstorm together,” Drew said. “We’ll sit down and shoot names and design concepts back and forth. It’s really cool that he does that for us because it saves us a ton on labeling. Whenever we’re setup at a trade show, we get huge feedback on our labels. People really like them and we are super lucky to have him. Again, it’s
all done in the family. When we do trade shows we often get help from parents, brothers, and sisters – they all come out and give us a hand, too. We are totally a family-run business, 100 percent. We still hand-bottle all our products.” Before the trade show days, before local shops started stocking No Joke on their shelves, and before Sobeys, Foodland, and Urban Fresh locations throughout Southern Ontario began carrying Pepper North products, there were the church kitchen days. “As we were starting out we were cooking our hot sauce in a local church kitchen we’d rented. We’d cook batches every couple of weeks and perform inventories as our market grew. We sold directly to cus- tomers basically that whole first year.” As the demand grew, so did their batch sizes. “We didn’t just start making more; we also added our second and third products that year: After- glow Hot Pepper Jelly and Hive Mind Hot Honey Mustard.” It wasn’t long until Pepper North “evolved from the church,” Drew said. “We now have a large bottling facility that we use here in Oshawa, but it is still all hand-blend- ed and hand-bottled. There’s no doubt that we’re producing a lot more sauce now.” If “medium to pretty extreme” isn’t in the gas- tronomic cards for you, don’t fret. While Drew’s speciality is undoubtedly “on the hotter end,” Pepper North’s milder condiments are not to be dismissed. Tastingtheheat.com gave Hive Mind Hot Honey Mustard 10 out of 10 for taste and a six out of 10 for heat – and the judges at the annual Hot Pepper Awards in Brooklyn, New York con- curred. They gave Hive Mind 1 st Place in the Sandwich Condiment category in 2017. “For that one we use only local Canadian honey, which is produced literally 15 minutes from where we live,” Drew explained. “We go to the beekeeper and we get the honey fresh – it is wildflower honey. The mustard seed we use is all- Canadian, which is big for a lot of people. Most mustards use Chinese mustard, which is in my opinion not as good as Canadian-grown mustard. We use the Carolina Reaper pepper in the mustard, which is actually the current hottest pepper in the world but we use a lesser quantity. It’s really good on burgers and sausages – and it’s really good with chicken fingers. A lot of people use it when they’re doing hams and cottage rolls and things like that because it can kind of be smeared on top before you cook it. That one has been really
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FEBRUARY 2018 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
Supporting food processing start-ups and expansions in Ontario with R&D, small batch processing, co-packing, packaging, and storage capacity for frozen, refrigerated, and shelf-stable products. When starting or expanding your food business, the recipe for success includes the Ontario Agri-Food Venture Centre. Ready to grow your business? Ask us how we can help.
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well-received. We have won three awards at the Hot Pepper Awards in New York City for that product. In 2016 we won first place in the Mustard category and we also won best condiment on sausage which was cool and then last year we took third place for sandwich condiments for that one so that was pretty cool.” Next on the mild scale is their Afterglow Pepper Jelly. Tas- tingtheheat.com gave this one 3 out of 10 for heat – and another 10 out of 10 for taste. “It’s for doing hors d’oeu- vres mostly,” Drew explained. “Do a plate of crackers, some cream cheese, and pepper jelly – it is fantastic! You can use it as a glaze, too, and that is an apricot base. It’s on the sweeter side – I’d say it’s a combination of sweet and hot. Originally we only offered Afterglow as a seasonal product – we more or less released it in October over Thanksgiving and for the Christmas season – but now we’ve added it in full-time because people are always asking for it!” After- glow won first place in the Jelly/Jam category at the 2017 Hot Pepper Awards. Pepper North’s mildest product is their Heart of Aztlan BBQ Sauce. I warn you, there’s more than one descrip- tor ahead capable of eliciting a Pavlovian response. “It’s a smoked apple base and it also has Jim Beam bourbon, which gives it a unique flavour. There’s a mix of peppers in that one, too, like the hotter peppers like cayenne and chile rojo, which just means red chili in Spanish but it’s from Mexico and it is a super rare pepper that’s been growing
customers. Usually the husband can handle extreme heat but his wife and his kids usually don’t want the killer heat, they usually want something a little bit milder for the whole family.” If you still need convincing to order a bottle from peppernorth.com, check out the independent customer reviews of Heart of Aztlan BBQ Sauce on YouTube. Tast- ingtheheat.com gave this one 2.5 out of 10 for heat and, again, 10 out of 10 for taste. “Do a plate of crackers, some cream cheese, and pepper jelly – it is fantastic!” Drew’s hottest recipes are winning big, too. Momento de Muerte, made from a black cherry base and Carolina Reaper peppers, took home first place overall at the 2017 Hot Pepper Awards. “That was huge for us,” Drew said. “With that sauce alone we’ve won eight awards. The thing about that sauce is when you first eat it, it’s not too hot. Then within about 60 seconds it starts to creep on you. Within two minutes it’s full- force. Sometimes people try it and walk away and then they will come back gasping,” he laughed. “It’s funny because sometimes you get people at shows who are like, “Oh, I can handle anything; give me the hottest!” And then it’;s great watching their faces. We make some pretty hot sauces. We make sauces that keep the chiliheads happy, I like to say. Our hottest sauce is called Stargazer. It’s also an all-natural hot sauce and it’s your full on 10 out of 10 for heat. We don’t use any pepper extracts, remember, so if you have ever seen a Dave’s Insanity Sauce or Blair’s Death Sauce they use pepper extracts to make it hotter. We don’t use any artificial ways of cranking up the heat in our sauces – we use all 100 percent fresh peppers, which is kind of unique as far as hot sauces go. We took 2 nd place for Ultra Hot Sauce at the Fiery Food Challenge for Stargazer.” Remember, Pepper North’s five hot sauces and three con- diments – which are all natural, free from added preserva- tives, and gluten free – can be found in over 250 stores across Ontario andbeyond. All eight handcrafteddelicious gourmet hot pepper products can also be found online at Pepper- North.com and shipped to any address across Canada.
for over a thousand years. Needless to say, it’s pretty rare in Canada. It’s not too hot but it’s a really flavourful pepper. It’s a sweet barbeque sauce and a lot of people say it’s the best barbecue sauce ever – especially on sausage. We just recently took 3 rd place with our BBQ sauce at the 2018 Fiery Food Challenge in Dallas, Texas. I wanted to make a barbecue sauce that people could put on pulled pork and ribs and steak and the family could eat it, too. I didn’t want it to be only for one person. That’s what I hear a lot of from
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Supporting food processing start-ups and expansions in Ontario with R&D, small batch processing, co-packing, packaging, and storage capacity for frozen, refrigerated, and shelf-stable products. When starting or expanding your food business, the recipe for success includes the Ontario Agri-Food Venture Centre. Ready to grow your business? Ask us how we can help.
Visit OAFVC.ca
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PEPPER NORTH 27 - 1300 King St. E. #203 Oshawa, Ontario, Canada L1H8J4 ana@peppernorth.com • drew@peppernorth.com
905-441-8978
www.peppernorth.com
as spotlighted in the FEBRUARY 2018 issue of SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
www.spotlightonbusinessmagazine.com
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