We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Taelyn Lang a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Taelyn , thanks for joining us today. So, let’s start with a hypothetical – what would you change about the educational system?

I truly believe that our education system as a whole should be much more focused on preparing students to be members of society that are able to be both self-sufficient and a part of a team. Teaching practical skills like basic mechanics, cooking, how to prepare a budget for your household, and basic civics seem to really be lacking in modern schools. Growing up in the ’80s I was in the very tail end of having an opportunity to get some of that education like wood shop and I took a lot of cooking classes because I knew I wanted to be a professional chef from a really young age.

Taelyn , 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?

I got my first job in a professional kitchen at the age of 14 because my dad knew a restaurant owner and asked him if I could come and basically do an internship. I work there for about 6 months on the weekends for free, until one day the owner said well I guess we should probably start paying you. I had a couple of other odds and ends jobs through high school and restaurants and went to culinary school immediately after high school. I was really fortunate that my culinary school was still the old system before the cordon bleues of the world took over. I was able to attend a 1-year program for about $15,000 all in and I got a pretty decent education. I’ve always said you get out of it what you put in, I stayed late mop the floors extra and really applied myself probably better than I had in anyway previous education because I was actually engaged and excited about what I was learning. I worked full-time professionally in restaurants for the last 25 years and am currently trying to transition away from it to fully engage in my new business that I founded a few years ago making fermented hot sauces. During the pandemic I was laid off from my job, And I was working with a friend who runs a small CSA based out of people’s suburban yards, he had excess produce because there’s only so many cabbages you can give to somebody in a CSA and so I would take his extra produce and make kimchi or sauerkraut or pickles, I had asked him to let some of the jalapenos he was growing turn red because I had this idea for a hot sauce that I wanted to do but it wasn’t a great year for peppers and so he shows up on my doorstep with a whole bunch of green jalapenos at the end of the season and a bunch of scallions and said sorry man this is what I have for you. So I had another idea for hot sauce kicking around in my head and I gave it a go and the very first batch that I made turned out to be my flagship hot sauce almost exactly the same recipe that I used today, Green Cobra. I named that sauce after one of the peppers in that very first batch that was deformed and just happened to look like a little cobra. As soon as I tried it I was like oh shit I’ve got something here. So I made a few more batches and replicated it and dialed in all the little everythings and decided that I really wanted to give something to go to see if I could produce a business out of it. I’m really fortunate here in Portland to have access to some wonderful friends who are really creative and amazing artists so I was able to work with a friend of mine to build a logo and get the branding the direction that I wanted it. The power of the community at large has been instrumental in my ability to be a successful as I have been. Working with friends or working with friends of friends for things like layout, graphic design etc…

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I mean the entirety of my current business is a pivot. I got laid off in the pandemic and had a lot of opportunity for free time and creativity and definitely realized that there was a better life out there. Working with my friend who ran the CSA was a lot of fun it was just a little side hustle he’d bring me the cabbages I turned into sauerkraut and package it and then he would then in turn included in his CSA or sell it at their farm stand and we just put the profits just a nice little side hustle/beer money. Having more time off than I had ever had in my entire life was really good for my mental health and definitely made me realize that it was time to maybe try to transition out of day-to-day restaurant work. So now while I still have a day job I’m growing the hot sauce business slowly and organically the way I want to with the hope that I’ll be able to make that my main job sooner rather than later

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

This is a really crowded field there are some really truly excellent hot tosses out there, but I also feel like there are a lot of hot sauces that are simply new versions of a known thing, like some kind of rebranded Chipotle flavor or mild hot and hotter versions of the same sauce. At Tortuga Gordo, we strive for every sauce to be incredibly unique and surprising. Watching people taste my products for the first time is a really fun experience because they go into it thinking they know what they’re going to get and then all of a sudden they’ve got this wild burst of flavor and there’s usually a smile and a contemplative pause, and then they’re like oh that’s really good. So I’m all about flavor first and flavor above all Yes we’re hot sauce company Yes they will be spicy but generally speaking nothing we do is going to blow your face off that market’s cornered and in my opinion kind of dumb I’m not into selling somebody one bottle of sauce every year I want to sell you a bottle of sauce every week.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tortugagordo.com
• Instagram: @tortuga_gordo

Image Credits
Taelyn Lang, Rachel Lang