Nationally known hot sauce uses peppers from local gardens

Small Axe Peppers Hot Sauce uses community garden partners to produce the peppers for its hot sauce. Locally, Heartland Alliance’s FarmWorks is one of the partner gardens. PHOTOS PROVIDED BY DAN KULP
Small Axe Peppers Hot Sauce uses community garden partners to produce the peppers for its hot sauce. Locally, Heartland Alliance’s FarmWorks is one of the partner gardens. PHOTOS PROVIDED BY DAN KULP

 Nationally known hot sauce uses peppers from local gardens

By Tia Carol Jones
Dan Fitzgerald and his business partner John Crotty started Small Axe Peppers Hot Sauce because they had acquired land and created a community garden. It was their first foray into the community garden and urban farming scene, something that the Bronx is robust for. The problem they ran into was that while the gardens were doing amazing things on the grassroots level in their communities, they had to depend on city grants and out of pocket expenses to fund what they were doing.

“The idea behind Small Axe Peppers was to try and make a hot sauce, a value added product initially, a hot sauce was what we settled on. A five-ounce bottle that could represent something much bigger than any one garden, any one group, any one community and it could kind of add value and create a revenue stream where previously none existed,” Fitzgerald said.

In 2015, Small Axe Peppers donated serrano pepper seeds to five gardens in the Bronx. They agreed to buy back 100% of the peppers and those gardens could dedicate 10% of their garden to growing the peppers as a cash crop, to offset the cost of running the garden.

The first year, there were five garden partners that grew 150 pounds. Small Axe Peppers made 1,000 bottles of hot sauce which was sold at farmers markets. The next year, there were 25 gardens and they grew 1,500 pounds of peppers. Gardens were able to earn income and grow produce as a cash crop.
Since then, the garden network has grown each year. Now, there are more than 75 garden partners who produce around 14, 243 pounds of peppers.

“One of the things I love about this project is when I get to go to the gardens.  I get to see children and people who grew up in very urban environments visualize, for the first time, where food actually comes from. It comes from the earth, it comes from seeds,” Fitzgerald said.

In the spring, seeds are donated to the garden partners. They plant those seeds and when the peppers are ready, they are picked and sent to the kitchen facility. When they get an order, they cook the hot sauce and send it to the distributors. It goes from seed to sauce to shelf within a six- to nine-month period. It closes the gap between the community garden and the socially conscious consumer.

In 2018, Fitzgerald came to Chicago to meet garden partners. There are eight gardens in Chicago the company works with. Fitzgerald chooses the gardens to partner with. One of those garden partners is FarmWorks, the two-acre urban farm located in East Garfield Park operated by Heartland Alliance.

Steve Schultz is the farm site coordinator at Heartland Alliance’s FarmWorks. FarmWorks was developed to grow produce for Vital Bridges Food Pantries, which fits into the Heartland’s antipoverty mission. FarmWork’s mission is workforce development and supporting the community to find full-time employment for those with barriers to employment.
Partnering with Small Axe is different because it is a for profit business. The money that FarmWorks makes from selling peppers to Small Axe goes back into the farm. The peppers are grown in four beds out of 125-130 beds.

“That’s where I think our two missions align, community investment. Investment may look different, investment may be different but it’s about focusing on people of the city and the community and looking to make it better,” Schultz said.
The piece Schultz loves the most is that Small Axe Chicago Style Hot Sauce was on “Hot Ones,” a show where celebrity guests eat hot wings that get hotter with each wing.

For more information about Small Axe, visit smallaxepeppers.com. For more information about FarmWorks, visit www.heartlandalliance.org/program/chicago-farmworks/.

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