Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Aaron Davie. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Aaron, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?
It’s funny, in this business you see a lot of flame, heat, hell or pepper based names. For the record, love all of them but I wanted something a little more personal to my experience. As I was thinking about what I wanted to call my business, I thought about where my love of spiciness and food started. When I was a kid, there was a summer camp at the local university that was offered. It was a multicultural camp where exchange students would come in and teach us about their culture and customs. Part of that teaching was a culinary class. It was such an exciting experience to learn about jerk and harissa flavors and then to make your own dish, it was completely eye opening to me. I was a pretty standard picky eater, so this was huge. I was instantly hooked on anything spicy. When I told my parents about it, they were both saying “you don’t like jerk, what are you talking about??”. Flash forward to now, and that experience had stuck with me which is what led me to call this Summer Camp Sauces as a tribute to the time my taste buds were expanded. It maybe isn’t a universal feeling, but the nostalgic aspect of it really hit home. I think what really brought it all together was the label, because the name feels goofy at first. I had a couple of mock ups done, but the one that we stuck with was what really brought the whole brand to life.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
We are a craft hot sauce business out of Austin, Texas called Summer Camp Sauces. We sell our collection of sauces nationwide. I started getting into it as a hobby during the covid shutdown. Lots of our friends were growing peppers in their garden and would drop off extras. I started playing around with different flavor/pepper combinations and dropping them off for friends to sample. After enough people told me that you should sell them, I decided to make the jump. Taking the time to learn all the math and science behind your sauce process and getting the sauces approved was definitely a learning curve. One of my biggest takeaways is also what I think makes us unique. They are hundreds of hot sauce makers out there. Focusing on our flavor combinations and spice blends is what can set you apart because at it’s core – its just hot peppers, vinegar and salt. We’ve had some excellent highs (like being honored in the judges and people’s choice section of the Austin Hot Sauce Festival) and some frustrating lows (set backs with process approval) but its all part of getting a business up and running.
Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?
This goes hand in hand with your business model and marketing strategy. For us, the biggest way to build clientele is first locally and then digitally. So doing consistent markets and events in the area is a great way to locally grow your brand. Getting involved in different social media interest group pages is a way to grow your fan base as well. Having trusted reviewers give their non-biased feedback on their social media platforms helps instill a certain amount of trust in your product, especially when you can’t sample it like you would at an event or market. You can also build partnerships with local businesses, for us it was food trucks or restaurants to help mutually promote a menu that features our sauce. We are just wading into the water of wholesale but that will likely be our next venture.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
So straight out of college I attempted to make a living playing in a band. Looking back I was so naive and confident that if we just put out good material, things would naturally fall into place. All I had to do was to believe in the content. Long story short, when that ended, I still maintained the idea that we just weren’t given the right opportunity. Going into this venture, and even in life in general, I had to completely leave that mentality behind. You could have the absolute best product or service and it will mean nothing without a proper brand awareness and marketing strategy. I will admit, I am no where near an expert in that area and still something Im constantly looking to improve on.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.summercampsauces.com
- Instagram: @summercampsauces
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100090916212571