Chef Sam Davis-Allonce’s hot sauce company makes a splash.
When chef Sam Davis-Allonce started in the hospitality space, she excelled in the service industry as a caterer, private chef, consultant and more. But a detour into the CPG (consumer packaged goods) world was unplanned, and the resulting response has been even more a surprise, albeit a welcome one that has witnessed her succeed to new highs.
The secret sauce (pun intended) is no more a secret—her hot sauces have taken the condiment world by storm, resulting in features on the famed “First We Feast” show where celebrities attempt eating hot chicken wings, increasing in their spice factor as they answer questions from the host.
Allonce’s Harlem-based business Hot N Saucy was launched in August 2020. She now has a production facility in Atlanta, Georgia, and a co-manufacturer in Florida because that truly is the current demand for her products.
An Unexpected Initiation
“We are scaling and growing rapidly,” says Allonce, sharing there might be another flavor introduced this year to add to the five she already has. These include Collards N Ghost, Black Garlic N Peri Peri, Garlic N Peperoncini, Beet N Fresno and Sweet Potato N Habanero. “But I don't want to overextend myself. My major focus for the business is getting to retail this year.”
She currently splits time between Harlem, which is home, and Atlanta, where it was cost-effective to set up a production space. A chef with more than a decade of experience, she has worked every single position in the kitchen, leading to executive chef at different restaurants. “I always found that whatever menu I was making, I was always adding little extra sauces to accompany meals,” says Allonce. She would also make sauces to give to friends and family as gifts and for Christmas.
In 2019, she participated in a friend’s pop-up shop and sold out of the sauces she had made. To respond to interest, she set up a Shopify page, but the pandemic hit at the beginning of 2020, and as a chef, she found herself out of work. “The day that New York City shut down was also the day my husband and I found out we were having a baby. It was a double whammy. As my pregnancy progressed, I was craving spicy foods.”
But everything she tried, she felt didn’t pack a punch. “They all have the same ingredients, kind of taste the same. So, I went from the one flavor of hot sauce that I was doing and developed a few more.” The Hot N Saucy product line was born. You’d be surprised to learn that Allonce’s professional experience prior to the hospitality industry was in medical research.
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Perusing the Path to Hot N Saucy
Raised in D.C., Allonce went to college in Jersey and drove to New York after graduation and never looked back. She has a bachelor’s of science from Rutgers in public health, a master’s in clinical research, and another she earned from Tulane in December 2021; a master of management in entrepreneurial hospitality.
She was involved in cancer research as a research coordinator at NYU and worked at Memorial Sloan Kettering for ten years. Fulfilling as that career was, it affected her. “I got close to my patients, and some stories don't end very well,” she confides. “What brought me joy was after work, I would go home, make beautiful dinners, host brunches and parties for my friends on the weekends and that made me happy.”
Allonce took a step in that direction. While still at the hospital, she started dabbling into the restaurant space and continued that dual life for three years until she was confident enough to leave her day job.
Then she worked her way up and started a catering business in 2011 called Savor by Sam. That eventually led to working as a private chef for athletes and celebrities. Before the pandemic, she counted as one of her clients actor and comic Leslie Jones, who appears on the popular American television show “Saturday Night Live.”
On her inspiration for the flavors, she shares, “My father is Rastafarian, so I grew up vegetarian. That was a big part of my introduction to food. As I became a chef, I started eating meat, exploring different cuisines. But vegetarianism and veganism have always been close to my heart, my culture, and my heritage and how I was raised. I knew when I was creating the products, I wanted to use unique ingredients and decided to lean on the vegetables.”
All the sauces are vegetable-based; four are vegan, but a reformulation is in the works for the fifth sauce that is not vegan (contains honey) to join the fold. The flavors are bold and bright, as are the graphics, which help the sauces stand out on retail shelves. “When I approach making recipes and developing flavors, I look at the big picture. How is it going to feed into not only what I want it to taste like, but what I want it to look like, smell, all those different touchpoints,” says Allonce.
“The brand is super close to me. It's a big reflection of how I see myself. I knew I wanted to create sauces that not only were spicy and flavorful but bold and eye-catching. When I thought about how I wanted it to look, I knew how I wanted it to taste. That's how I started to think about different ingredients that could give me those results. It’s a 360 approach. You don't just consume with your mouth; you consume with all your different senses.”
Reaping the Rewards
Hot N Saucy is currently available online, on Heatonist—after being featured in season 14 of their Hot Ones series, and is sold in all Marshalls, TJ Maxx, and Home Goods stores across the United States. For Allonce, much of it this journey has been a blur.
“I have been very fortunate with our online presence—all the retailers that we work with reached out to us. Now we're in a space where I can't rest on those laurels anymore, so I'm having to pitch to different retailers to make them interested in us. But it's been a great learning curve in the CPG world because I'm a chef. This is totally new for me, but it has been fulfilling and rewarding seeing X amount of effort literally equals X amount of reward. You don't always get that in the chef world.”
As for the appearance of Hot N Saucy on the “First We Feast” show, Allonce is thrilled about the feature. The whole exchange happened over Instagram when they sent a DM expressing interest.
“In a matter of two months, I'm shipping them 50,000 units, and I see my sauce being eaten by all these celebrities. It was fast and furious, but that exposure, you can't pay for it. It's priceless.” Social media has played a big role in the brand’s reach, and Allonce is floored by the user-generated content she sees. Now she is gearing up to strategically market and promote the brand this year.
One challenge she shares has been access to capital. “It's no secret anymore that Black business owners have a harder time accessing capital, and it's even harder for Black women. But the company is still totally self-funded. Ideally, I would like to start raising capital, venture capital is the way I want to go, but preparing the company for that is going to take some time.”
Meanwhile, she plans for more wholesale and retail operations and hiring staff. While hot sauce will always remain the core at Hot N Saucy, she is eyeing expansion into different cooking sauces, marinades, dressings and wet and dry spices.
To learn more about Allonce and Hot N Saucy, visit the website on www.hotnsaucy.co or follow on Instagram and Facebook for updates.
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