We recently connected with Jennifer Altamirano and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jennifer thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

Once the idea of taking our homemade hot sauce to a retail level became a goal and official business, we started by doing extensive research on the process of manufacturing and bottling. There is no hand book or step by step instructions spelled out so we just started calling different departments that handle permitting and asking all kinds of questions. Eventually we checked off all the boxes needed to begin and start submitting our sauce to stores.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

7 Siblings began in our backyard when our family planted ghost peppers in our garden. My husband is a hot head and a huge hot sauce consumer so we thought it would be fun to grow some of the hottest peppers in the world. Once we harvested the peppers and started making our blend of ghost pepper, roasted garlic and fresh ginger hot sauce and sharing with friends and family, feedback was extremely positive and people love the heat and flavor our sauce brings to the table. Fast forward 2 years later we have grown our business with our sauce being featured in over 30 California restaurants and our pop up booth offering our signature fried tamales.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

You could definitely say we started from scratch when beginning to manufacture our hot sauce. I have extensive kitchen experience with having worked in restaurant kitchens for 10 years but I had no experience taking a hot sauce to retail shelves. About a year into the process of preparing our product for retail we found a co-packer that helped us fine tune our process and recipe. Nothing like learning from pros that have been in your field for many years. We still work with our co packer and also self manufacture bottles and gallons headed to restaurant tables and kitchens.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Our social media presence is one of the best ways for us to share our journey with those who love our sauce and story. At one point I had hired an agency to run our social media but I found that we have a very engaged audience and I didn’t want people to feel like we are only on social media apps to make sales. We truly want to share our family’s journey and our love for hot sauce and all things food and spice related. At first I was worried about gaining followers and numbers of likes but now I would rather grow organically. Networking and cross promoting with other businesses has been the most effective method of growth for us and also finding influencers who truly love our products has also been significant in our growth. We don’t pay anymore to promote us, if someone is sharing about 7 Siblings, they are doing so because they love it and believe in us and that’s hugely satisfying.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.7siblingshotsauce.com
• Instagram: @7siblingshotsauce
• Facebook: 7 Siblings Hot Sauce

Image Credits
@photobyrusty Russel Spencer