Hey it's Sean here from 13 Stars Hot Sauce.
My hot sauce journey started before I was even born. When my mother was pregnant with me she used to go to the local taco shop and just straight up eat hot sauce packets.
Fast forward to the age of ten I was diagnosed by my doctor with high blood pressure for using too much hot sauce on my food (I was literally putting it on pancakes).
As I grew older I joined the military to pursue something bigger than my myself. To give back to a country that had provided me so much.
In 2018, I was tapped to deploy.
Deployments have a funny way of putting things into perspective. It was a powerful reminder of life’s brevity and unpredictability. Seeing both human resilience and fragility firsthand pushed me to create something truly meaningful.
I learned to cherish and appreciate the small things. As friends and family being the greatest source of happiness in life.
As a lot of individuals that have deployed can attest to there was pre-deployment me and post-deployment me. I may have looked the same but was forever changed by the experience.
Post deployment, with this newfound appreciation, I had decided to dabble in creating something that was my own and allowed me to give back with my renewed respect for those that serve. But I was unsure in what.
My friend father grows peppers in his backyard for fun; ranging from Jalapenos to Ghost Peppers.
Naturally, us being stupid guys, decided to mess around with them. We started to make homemade hot sauces with the summer harvest; not thinking anything about it at the time.
90% of the sauces sucked.
The 10% that were good we bottled up and threw in the fridge.
Over the next few weeks, I had invited friends and family over for dinner and cracked out the hot sauce.
My mother turned to me and said, "I could see you selling this in a boutique store or something'. And I thought to myself, "hm, maybe I'm onto to something here".
The next day I went online and paid WAY too much money for some glass bottles and some caps.
I brought the newly bottled sauces to a football game with no intention of selling.
We let the tailgaters try the sauces and their eyes lit up.
"Where can I get some of this?" and "I need this in my life"
The proverbial lightbulb went off at that point and I hit the ground running.
Fast forward to today, 13 Stars is an award winning hot sauce business.
If you told me 5 years ago this is what I was going to be doing with my life I wouldn't have believed you.
Funny how life can come around full circle sometimes.
I've made it my mission to give back. From day one of starting the business it was at the core of who we are and wanted to be. We have aligned ourselves with non-profits that help deal with the unique problems that come from the line of duty.
Whether it's off or on the battlefield.
This community we are building is incredible, and it's an absolute honor to make these lifelong friendships with such driven and patriotic people.
I feel grateful that this is my job. It's so much more than just something that allows me to put food on our table.
It's something that speaks to my soul and hopefully yours as well.
Stay spicy my friend,
Sean
P.S. .If you want to ask me anything about the business or how we give back feel free to email me directly at sean@13starshotsauce.com (no B.S.).
