Would You Like to Buy a Hot Sauce Business? (A Look Inside the Heat)
A Long Shot That Became the Real Thing: What I’ve Learned Building Karma Sauce
It was a little after 6 p.m. on a Saturday when I got off the phone with a friend who wants to start a tea business. We talked pH meters, scheduled processes, and why you have to recalibrate them so frequently. It reminded me how much I love this stuff — the technical side of food, the systems that make small ideas scalable, the little details that keep products safe, consistent, and delicious.
Lately, I’ve been working with a small company in Hawaii on production expansion. Fly to Honduras to troubleshoot fermentation so they can scale exports? I’m down. These are the things that still light me up. After years in the hot sauce business, helping newer folks figure it out still feels electric. If I ever did pass the torch, I'd want it to be someone who feels that same charge — that sense of possibility.
When I started Karma Sauce in my garage, I imagined it growing — maybe not into what it’s become, but into something real. My version of success was modest: replace the income from my engineering job and make something I could be proud of.
For a long time, I didn’t get close to that original vision. I didn’t pay myself. I just kept refining — making, tweaking, scaling in place. I didn’t mind. There was a clarity in doing the work. But once I jumped in full time, the energy shifted. Within a year, I’d matched my old salary. No maxed-out credit cards, no drained retirement accounts. Just steady, stepwise growth.
Eventually, I started to notice how the business was behaving more like a machine — something with gears and timing, something that could run whether I touched every piece or not. It wasn't just a hustle anymore. It was starting to look like a system someone else could learn — and maybe even lead.
A little background: I started as an engineer at Kodak in 1991. I was ambitious, tried to organize systems, dreamed of running large projects. But what I actually loved — and still love — is the technical detail. I ended up as a high-level contributor, collecting patents and leading efforts on projects like the James Webb Space Telescope and the Vera Rubin Observatory. In between, I took what looked like a detour: I moved from space optics to laptop screens at GE. Then I pivoted back, this time to Harris.
Around the time I stepped away from engineering, Hot Ones had just launched. A future employee introduced me to the show, and I was surprised to see Noah Chaimberg involved. But our connection went back even further. Noah reached out to me in 2013, before Hot Ones existed — back when I was still running Karma Sauce out of my garage. He was launching HEATONIST as a pushcart in Brooklyn and thought my sauces might be a good fit.
That email kicked off something big. At the time, Karma Sauce was still a one-person show, built entirely in my garage — growing, bottling, labeling, shipping. I had also bought and was running a farm to supply our own ingredients. Sometimes I found myself challenging NASA program managers who wanted me in Houston, letting them know I couldn’t make it — because I was in the middle of a pepper harvest. With Noah’s early support — and later Chris Schonberger’s, as Hot Ones caught fire — those garage roots ...
Not long after, Noah sent me a creative brief and asked me to develop a new sauce. That became Los Calientes! We developed the recipes for all three Los Calientes variations we make today — and Karma Sauce still holds the underlying IP. Chris and Sean (and the team at First We Feast) built the brand. It only worked because we all delivered: product, platform, and persistence. For me, it’s been an honor to contribute to something that means so much to fans and flavor-seekers around the world.
Today, Karma Sauce is a multi-million dollar business with a 15-person team and three Los Calientes SKUs as core products. We are still scrappy, seasoned, and hands-on. But we are also feeling the weight of scale. More customers, more complexity, thinner margins, more human needs. I’m not just a maker anymore. I’m a leader. And that part of the job, to be honest, is a tougher fit.
The team is incredible. They’ll stare down 4,000 pounds of ghost peppers and just get it done. But I feel the weight of the whole machine now. It’s not just about sauce. It’s about logistics, morale, and the very real lives of the people who keep this thing going. Personal crises, childcare gaps, broken-down cars — these things shape the workday more than strategy sometimes.
And the parts I love? They start after 6 p.m. — if they happen at all. The rest is meetings, procurement nightmares, chargebacks, and the occasional fire to put out (sometimes literally). I never thought the biggest stressor in a hot sauce business would be margin erosion, but here we are.
So yeah, I’m open. Open to change. Open to evolution. Open to the idea that someone else might come in and carry this further than I could. I’m not burned out. I’m still lit up by the right kind of work. But I’m also aware that the skill set to build a company isn’t always the same one needed to scale it.
What I’ve Learned (So Far):
- You can be generous and still keep your boundaries.
- You don’t have to grow fast to grow strong.
- Some pivots look like detours. They’re not.
- No one is coming to save your margins.
- Doing meaningful work means sometimes stepping aside so others can.
At this year’s Fancy Food Show, Sean and Chris took a moment to thank me personally. That landed. It reminded me that relationships matter — not just contracts or product runs, but real partnership — and they’ve shown that from the beginning. Because they’ve seen the arc. From garage shipment to Los Calientes to now. That moment said: this wasn’t just a phase. It was a real thing.
So if you’re reading this wondering what it takes to run a hot sauce company — or dreaming about buying one — let me tell you: it’s not all spice and glory. But it is real. For the right person, someone who cared about details, people, and peppers… they might just make the next hard pivot worth it.