We caught up with the brilliant and insightful John and Stacy Currie a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

John and Stacy , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, let’s imagine that you were advising someone who wanted to start something similar to you and they asked you what you would do differently in the startup-process knowing what you know now. How would you respond?

We learned a lot in the first year or two. Some highlights include: 1. No one will understand and take care of your business like you will.
2. We learned when to do it ourselves and when to hire an expert.
3. If someone you’ve hired is moving in the wrong direction, it is best to part ways early.

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?

Semper Savage Sauce Company is a family operated, veteran owned business offering small batch marinades and dressings. We like to say, it’s homemade flavor in a bottle, and you’re gonna love it!

Semper Savage is on a global crusade to bring great tasting, homemade salad dressing to the
World! We are challenging the status quo in the food industry, offering homemade salad dressing in a bottle with all-natural, pure ingredients without sugar, added water or weird food science craziness.

We inspire people through personal connections and Savage patriotism. With Family as our core and strength, we are achieving excellence while tirelessly pursuing perfection.

We engage with, support, and serve the military, veteran, first responder community and their families. We are building a tribe connected through our beliefs, our values, and what our products reflect about our customers.

Join the Semper Savage crusade! We look forward to getting to know you and your family. We look forward to serving you with passion and joy.

Inspiration
John always loved salad. But, to have a good salad, you need a great salad dressing. While working at Gabby’s Italian restaurant as a teenager, John learned the secret to kickass food: a great recipe, the finest ingredients, and flawless execution. Gabby’s had great salad dressing! Unable to find anything similar on store shelves, John embarked on a quest to make his own kickin’ salad dressing and marinade.

The Aha Moment
There were a lot of mistakes and really bad dressing during years of experimentation. But, it kept getting better. Finally, while on active duty in the United States Marine Corps, he finally experimented his way to a truly kickass homemade salad dressing with simple, all natural ingredients, no additives, sugar, water or chemicals to dilute the intense flavors.

Kicks Grilling Into Gear!
Stacy has always been a great cook. But she is a true grill master! As a busy mom and educator, she began using John’s salad dressing to marinate meats and veggies for simple, quick meals prepared on the grill. The salad dressings became a daily part of her meal preparation routine. Other people loved it too! For years, John and Stacy mixed hundreds of jars of what would become Semper Savage salad dressing for family and friends who raved about the flavor and clamored for more.

The Kicker
The final kick of inspiration and motivation to build a company came from their oldest daughter, who was living away from home, and missed the great flavor of Semper Savage for her salads. For Christmas one year, she gave John a case of mason jars with labels she’d made with a silly photo of him. John opened the present, and a note read, “Please fill these jars with salad dressing!” After having a good laugh, John and Stacy couldn’t help but admire the jars and labels. They began to talk about going out on a limb to start a company dedicated to America, great salad dressing and marinade, pursuit of excellence, and family.

Beginning
John and Stacy started Semper Savage in 2018. A friend provided early mentorship to guide them through the process of bottling the salad dressing. After a solid year of hard work, two Semper Savage products were launched on Veterans Day 2019.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

We had to pivot on several occasions. We’ve learned a great deal each time we’ve had to do so. The first time was with our website. We ended up doing several iterations using a couple of different people and ultimately took it on ourselves.
The second time was with marketing. This was mostly because we knew nothing about it. We ended up using two companies over about nine months or so. We learned a lot from both of them, but we had to bring that back in house as well as we are really the only ones who can effectively tell our story.
Third, we made a conscious decision to reel in expenses and make the company home based, smaller, higher quality and with more personal interactions with customers.
We are also working more face to face events for sales rather than relying on social media marketing. This is based on experience in which we have good sales face to face when we’re able to interact with customers. Sales tend to lag online.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Our philosophy has always been to not be in debt with the company. We’ve never spent more than we were able to afford at the time. This is what drove many of our decisions to cut expenses, which has been an ongoing effort most recently resulting in everything except for actual product production being brought back in house.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sempersavage.com
• Instagram: @sempersavage
• Facebook: Semper Savage
• Linkedin: @sempersavage
• Twitter: NA
• Youtube: Semper Savage
• Yelp: NA

Image Credits
All images by John and Stacy Currie