He’s heating up: Elgin native’s garage-born hot sauce biz is on fire after big contest win
Excuse the deep callback to “Zoolander,” but Chef David Heatley is so hot right now.
The Elgin native who launched Chef Heatley's Hot Pepper Farm hot sauces during the pandemic recently took home top honors at the NYC Hot Sauce Expo, winning best in show from a field of over 5,000 sauces.
“I was numb when I found out about it,” Heatley said. “You’re talking 5,000 sauces. I’m an optimist, but come on, that’s crazy.”
Heatley entered three of his limited edition sauces in the contest, Smashin’ Punkin’, Da Pope and You Are Dead To Me, with each one winning in its category and You Are Dead To Me winning best in show.
“This was huge,” he said. “I was mind blown.”
The sauce line has come a long way in a short period of time.
Heatley spent his 30ish-year career as a chef working in restaurants and country clubs. He was an executive banquet chef at White Pines Golf Club in Bensenville when the pandemic hit, and he got furloughed.
“I had to find something to keep me busy, so I just started growing hot pepper plants,” he said. “I ended up with so much I had to find something to do with them.”
He got a cottage license and started out making sauces in his garage in Montgomery. Once he did, he had to figure out how to sell them.
“I’d been stuck in a kitchen for 30 years, I had never even been to a farmers market,” he said.
His first big market was back in his hometown, selling at the Downtown Elgin Market in 2021.
“That was the start, that was when I knew that I had something,” he said. “I just got a tremendous reaction from people who tried it there.”
He started hiring kids from his neighborhood to help sell at other markets across the suburbs, including Arlington Heights, Bartlett and Geneva.
Since then, the venues have gotten bigger, and so has the company. He moved to a storefront in Sandwich that had space in the back for him to cook, bottle and box his products. He now has a dozen employees.
For the past couple of years, Heatley and his staff have traveled to about 700 shows and festivals per year in states as far away as Oregon, New Mexico and New York.
Sales have reached about 70,000 bottles a year.
Just like back in his garage, everything is still done manually, from cooking the sauce 50 gallons at a time, to then hand-bottling about 750 bottles per batch. Labels are put on using a hand-cranked machine.
While the sauces are available in a few retail stores and online, most sales happen face-to-face at events.
“We’re a new product,” he said. “If you put us on a store shelf, we’re just another brand that nobody recognizes. We have to get out in front of people and educate them about our brand.”
And what he wants people to know is that sauce is the more operative word when it comes to his products, as opposed to hot.
“What I focus on and what we sell is flavor,” he said. “The super hot stuff you see on TV on shows like ‘Hot Ones,’ that’s entertaining. But that’s not real-world stuff. People want flavor.”
His current lineup ranges from Knucklehead, with no heat, to Roasted Reaper, with significant heat but also substantial flavor. In between are sauces including Bacon Chipotle, Bourbon Steak Sauce, Mango BBQ Sauce, and Pizza Splash. Each sauce is designed to accentuate a different food.
“People always ask me which one is my favorite,” Heatley said. “It’s not about favorites. It’s about what’s for dinner.”
Ironically, the chef who doesn’t embrace heat for heat’s sake won his biggest award for his hottest sauce to date with the limited edition You Are Dead To Me.
“My whole thought process is I just don’t make super hot stuff,” he said. “But when I do I want it to be super flavorful, too.”
While Heatley has always been confident that he makes a good product, the contest win was validation in that confidence.
“I know I’ve succeeded in what I set out to do, but to be recognized for it? Unbelievable.”