We recently connected with Carol Brown and have shared our conversation below.
Carol, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?
Wawa Sauce! “What is Wawa Sauce and Why the name Wawa Sauce?” that’s the main question everyone asks at the local markets and events.
Kuwawa means hot in the native Malawian language called Chichewa, so I shortened the word to “Wawa”
I’m originally from Malawi, the warm heart of Africa as it’s known for the humble and good people.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Carol! “Please make that hot sauce and cabbage salad (more like some coleslaw with my homemade vinaigrette dressing) family and friends would ask me to prepare at events like birthday parties, baby shower and bbq “ One morning my husband (Mike) goes “Girl, you really need to package this sauce and sell it, a lot of people love your sauce”
With that encouragement and support here my head started spinning, I started thinking to myself Mike really has a great point. I found my book and paper, wrote my ideas and there goes my research on how to start a hot sauce business started in 2012.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
As the research started, I realized serving the public a packaged item like hot sauce would not be as easy as I thought however I sacrificed time to figure out how I would serve the public with the right guidelines which required all proper licensing. I invested time and enrolled in some classes at UGA pertaining to the food industry so I would implement my education to packaging an acidic product. Now keep in mind at that time in 2012 Mike and I didn’t have much, we were living pay check to pay check, balancing our family with the two kids we had at that time. I was working a full time job as a Dental Assistant, so I knew this process would take time and money so I knew I would have to take everything slow and be patient.
Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.
It was all worth it getting the proper education with UGA and obtained my certifications in 2013 and I’m proud to say I’m licensed with Department of Agriculture and I’ do package my products in a commercial kitchen. In 2019 both my husband and I decided it was time to really show my face to the public and we invested money in signing up for festivals with huge capacity so that Wawa Sauce name would be spread and known however 2020 Covid really shut us down as those huge capacity events did not exist any longer.
I had to think of another way as I was determined I didn’t want to give up on my dream, so then we decided signing up for farmers markets would help which I’m so glad we did that as we received huge support from the community, family and friends.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.wawasauce.com
- Instagram: wawa_sauce
- Facebook: WAWA Sauce
- Other: tiktok wawasauce
Image Credits
First I would like to give all credit to our savior Jesus Christ for his faithfulness in helping us and my personal thank you to my husband, my children and my adorable grandson Tristan for their continuous support Family, friends and the entire community; It takes a whole village to make this all possible. The love and outpouring support has been tremendous and we are so greatful. God bless you all and I can just hope this story inspires someone..