We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nick Curry. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nick below.

Hi Nick, thanks for joining us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

My obsession with hot sauce started at a young age. In my mid-teens, I started tinkering with my own recipes for fun, which then developed into a hobby that followed me through the years. Family and coworkers had the chance to try my recipes in earlier stages at pot lucks and the like. At least, that’s how things were until March 2020 when, like so many others, I lost my job as a result of the pandemic. Fast forward a few months and dozens of unreturned job applications, Father’s Day rolls around. Moiria, my wife, and my kids gifted me a box of 5 fl oz glass (woozy) bottles with a few accessories. Between job applications, I decided I’d make up a brand and some names for some of my favorite recipes. I brought the first bottles to a socially-distanced birthday party a month later and set them in the taco bar. The compliments started coming, though I was certain it was classic “Midwest nice” platitudes at first. A week later, a friend called and asked where they could get more. I was already working some odd freelance jobs, so I figured I would make some more sauce and see if it could pull in a few dollars here and there. I got in touch with some immensely helpful people at South Dakota State University Extension Office who helped me get up to speed on current laws and regulations for making and selling food products. With all the requirements in place, I started officially selling Halogi Hot Sauce in September 2020, unveiling it to the world with a Facebook page. Of course, I had no expectations of being an overnight sensation—and I wasn’t. I would sell a bottle here, a couple bottles there, and so on as days fell off the calendar. Sales started picking up to 10-20 bottles a week around Halloween. By the end of November, I was spending my days delivering sauce and my nights bottling it. Orders were low but steady. I still remember staring at an online shopping cart for over an hour, internally debating if I could justify spending a couple hundred dollars on bottles/caps/etc. Then in December, the Brookings Register did a story about Halogi. That week, orders poured in and a waitlist started. Within 10 days, people had ordered 500 bottles. I bought two specialty blenders that could cook the sauce while blending so I could make larger batches faster with even higher quality than before. At that point, I started talking with Luke Davidson—now my business partner and co-owner of the business—about getting involved with Halogi. Luke has extensive experience growing a small business and brought several connections to local restaurants, both critical factors for a growing business in need of commercial kitchen space. We found a great space and moved in during February of 2021 with a bare-bones equipment list. Along with the standard paperwork and inspections, it was everything we needed to make Halogi sauces viable for sale outside of South Dakota and in retail settings. From there, we launched the website in June 2021 and have been shipping regularly since. We have limited edition sauces to give our fans something new and fun. It’s been largely that same status quo since then with occasional changes for logistics / supply chain needs.

Nick, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We make small-batch hot sauce from fresh ingredients. Hot sauce is a multi-billion dollar industry, and it’s undoubtedly oversaturated. To help us stand out, we employed some traditional approaches (e.g. choosing a central theme and tone) and some modern approaches (e.g. marketing through influencers).
The name Halogi—and indeed the entire family of our product names—comes from the corpus of Norse mythology and medieval Scandinavian saga literature. This gives us an ample supply of rich, diverse names without deviating from our central theme. We loosely styled the logo on runes from the Futhark; the sharp angles and hard edges make the stylized HALOGI readable up close and from a distance. When specialty shops have shelves upon shelves of hot sauce, a distinctive and identifiable logo is a great way to draw attention. Once they pick up the bottle, they can see the color and texture of the sauces. We chose specific colors and a matte finish for our labels and shrink caps to ramp up contrast and showcase the vibrant colors in the bottle. Each sauce name has a story rooted in the literature, so we give a retelling on the side of the bottle. In the end, the aim is to convey our brand as sophisticated, complex, and meticulous, all of which are qualities of a good sauce maker.

We also got on Hot Ones Season 18, so that’s cool too.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I started the Halogi Facebook page as the first concerted effort to get our name in front of people. We’ve all had that acquaintance that constantly blasts their business page at every possible opportunity, much to the annoyance of the recipients of the blast. I wanted us to avoid that at all costs, so I invited friends, family, and other familiar faces in a steady, controlled roll-out. I didn’t ask or insist on them liking, sharing, or doing any sort of promotional actions because I wanted it to be organic. I was banking on the quality of my sauce, hoping they would spread the word of their own accord as genuine brand enthusiasts. Ultimately it worked, but it was a slow and steady trip uphill to the first 100 followers. The 100-follower mark is a curious rubicon to cross because it seems, on a minor level, an indication of a brand’s legitimacy for people unfamiliar with the company. At the very least, it gets them to scroll through a few posts, which is where the real strategy kicks in. Plenty of sources will claim posting content at high frequency is the best way to gain new followers. I disagree. Here are some insights I’ve gained so far.

-Rather than posting just to have a post, focus on quality content that encourages engagement.

-Ask questions and reply to people who comment. For no particular reason, I chose to have the official Halogi page respond to comments only in GIFs. I think I did it for the first few as a laugh, then it kind of stuck. I’ve had a few people tell me they commented just to see how I’d reply, which is when I realized I had incidentally taken control of the interaction. I built their expectations by being consistent, then delivered on those expectations to their delight. You can do the same.

-As counterintuitive as it sounds, promote other brands in the same space as yours—when they do good things, of course. Established brands have huge followings, and a portion of those followers will see your brand purely because you said something nice about another brand they like. Though I have zero data to back it up, I propose it comes across as a “friend of a friend” to people new to your brand.

-Around the holidays, I saw other brands in the hot sauce space pushing sales and giveaways with the “like and share” stipulation. We followed suit, but our posts never seemed to get anywhere near as much traction as similar content from brands with similar follower counts. After some ruminating, I realized asking someone to like/share/comment encourages a single social transaction before you lose their attention again. We needed something to keep them coming back, so I came up with what we call the Giftaway. People cannot enter their own name to the contest; instead, they have to tag someone else to win. Someone tagged their friends, their friends tagged them back, then the friends tagged more friends, and the whole thing snowballed. Having an opportunity to win a prize for someone else at the holiday season was a unique and fulfilling experience.

-Give careful attention to advertising metrics and ROI. Throwing more money at a less-than-stellar campaign doesn’t make it any more stellar and risks becoming obnoxious. Learn about A/B testing and use it to your advantage.

-Have fun. We’ve hit the pinnacle of cliche, but I would be remiss if I didn’t at least pay lip service to the idea. If the post you’re working on feels burdensome, put it down and come back later.

Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?

We are currently looking into copacking for other sauce makers. We produce our own sauces and have worked with copackers when order volumes exceed our commercial facility’s capacity. As we expand, we plan to offer copacking services to other up-and-coming sauce makers who cannot access a commercial production space for whatever reason (cost, availability, etc.). With several protections in place (Mutual NDA, iterative prototypes and quality checks to ensure the recipe produces well at larger scale, etc.), this allows us to help other brands grow while increasing our own revenue.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.halogihotsauce.com
• Instagram: @HalogiHotSauce
• Facebook: Www.facebook.com/HalogiHotSauce/
• Linkedin: Halogi Hot Sauce, LLC
• Twitter: @HalogiHotSauce

Image Credits
Tammie Mohr and Nick Curry