The Ultimate Dish
The Ultimate Dish
Heat You Can Handle: How a Chef Turned His Hot Sauce Into a Brand
In today’s episode, we chat with Matt Kuerbis, Escoffier Chef Instructor in Plant-Based Culinary Arts and Hospitality & Restaurant Operations Management. A chef-educator and entrepreneur, Matt blends classroom teaching with real-world brand building through his hot sauce company, HYCH.
Matt opens up about the high-stakes pivot behind “Heat You Can Handle.” He explains why trademark conflicts forced a name change from Hoss Soss, how sharpening the brand promise (flavor over fire) clarified positioning, and the practical steps that took HYCH from farmers’ markets and cooler-only sales to retail shelves in 100+ stores—co-packers, process authority letters, brokers, and 3PL fulfillment—while pricing for shrinking margins at scale.
Join us as Matt shares the founder mindset he teaches: conquering “restaurant math” fear, keeping books exit-ready, meeting guests where they are (plant-based, gluten-free, flavor-forward), and taking the very first steps—register the business, define your USP, and validate with real customers. It’s a candid, step-by-step guide for food entrepreneurs who want to turn a product into a brand—and a brand into a business.
TRANSCRIPT
Kirk Bachmann: Hello everyone. My name is Kirk Bachmann, and welcome back to The Ultimate Dish! Today, we’re excited to welcome Chef Matt Kuerbis, one of our own Chef Instructors right here at Escoffier, teaching Plant-Based Culinary Arts and Hospitality & Restaurant Operations Management.
Matt’s career spans more than 25 years of cooking and teaching in some incredible places like Alaska, Mexico, Costa Rica, and throughout the Pacific Northwest, and right here in Boulder, Colorado! He worked his way up from dishwasher to Executive Chef, eventually leading culinary education as Director of Education and Executive Chef at Le Cordon Bleu’s Portland campus. After earning his master’s degree in education, Matt discovered his passion for teaching the next generation of chefs.
Matt also walks the walk as an entrepreneur. In 2016, he and his wife Catharine launched HYCH, a craft hot sauce company born from a simple problem: where to find hot sauce with sophisticated global flavors that won’t burn your face off.
What started as a homemade batch in coolers at farmers’ markets has grown into an award-winning brand now sold in over 100 stores across the Pacific Northwest, including Fred Meyer, Market of Choice, New Seasons, and across the United States, for that matter.
Matt is living proof that success in the food industry takes creativity, adaptability, and business savvy, and today he brings that real-world entrepreneurial experience into our Escoffier classrooms every single day.
Get ready for a conversation about teaching plant-based cuisine, turning passion into profit, and what it really takes to build a food brand from scratch.
And there he is. Good morning, sir. How are you?
Matt Kuerbis: Good morning, Chef. It’s so good to be here. Thank you so much for having me on the show.
Some Small Talk
Kirk Bachmann: Absolutely! Totally stoked to have one of our chef instructors on the show and [to] talk entrepreneurship. That is a great, great dream that our students have.
Before we dive into all of that, our audience will figure out pretty quickly that you and I have met. I’ve got to ask real quick: how’s life in Portland right now?
Matt Kuerbis: Well, life in Portland is no longer. I’m down the road in Salem, Oregon, about 45 minutes south. Life is good. I’m teaching. I’m doing what I love. I’m making hot sauce and being in a beautiful environment. As you know, Colorado, Oregon, these places are incredible places to live in.
Kirk Bachmann: Yeah, we’re spoiled. We’re spoiled. You know, my second daughter, Kirsten, and her beautiful family are right there in Salem just across the bridge from you. My older daughter is a little further north. She’s over the river into Washington.
You’re a Buff, ironically. Colorado Buffs. Go Buffs! And I’m a Duck! Let’s go Ducks! My gosh, what a crazy world.
Matt Kuerbis: We’re going to have to do a house trade.
Kirk Bachmann: Yeah, we could do that. We could do that for a good game. For a good game. It’s funny because I’ve got to fold the Beavers into that, too, because my second daughter, Kirsten, who lives in Salem is a Beav, and so is her husband. I have to wear those shirts that have Ducks on one side, Beavs on the other.
Hey, by the way, I just remembered this from a long time ago when we were doing some of those trips up to Canada with the Le Cordon Bleu chefs and all of that. You’re a guitarist, aren’t you? Aren’t you a musician as well?
Matt Kuerbis: I am. I play music. I play in a band. Love music.
Kirk Bachmann: I love it. I love it. You can see the theme. When you’re talking to thought leaders in the world of food, and especially chefs, music always folds its way into it. Later, I’m going to ask for your top three bands of all time, no particular order. We’ll talk about that. Music, motorcycles, speed, stuff like that.
Matt Kuerbis: I have to stay off the motorcycles, but music…
Kirk Bachmann: I have one, but I stay off of it. That’s the big joke in the house. “How long is that motorcycle going to stay there?” Oh my gosh. I love it. Did you bring the guitar by any chance? Is it within reach?
Matt Kuerbis: The guitar is not within reach.
Kirk Bachmann: You’re at the coast, right?
Matt Kuerbis: Yeah, I’m at the coast right now. The guitar had to stay home. When we come out to the coast, the dog takes up most of the back of the car, so I can’t fit the guitar in.
Kirk Bachmann: I’ve got it. What kind of dog?
Matt Kuerbis: Black lab. Two-year-old black lab.
Kirk Bachmann: Perfect. Oh, two-year-old black lab.
Matt Kuerbis: He’s a handful.
Kirk Bachmann: What’s her name?
Matt Kuerbis: It’s Sam. Yeah, guy. Hoping he’s not going to come knocking on the door at some point.
Kirk Bachmann: That’s okay! If Sam wants to come in and see what’s going on with Daddy, he can certainly do that.
I had a black lab named Sam growing up. I wonder, if you put it into ChatGPT, I can guarantee that Sam is probably the most popular black lab name in history. I love that.
Matt Kuerbis: You’re probably right. You know, he came with the name Panther. I was like, Panther doesn’t work. I couldn’t have a cat name on the dog. We took him over from a family that couldn’t have him anymore. He was still pretty young, and we were like, Sam kind of rhymes with Panther. We kind of shifted. It took him a few weeks, but he got it.
A History in Colorado
Kirk Bachmann: Alright. I’m going to go with that because Panther is a pretty cool name. I’m not going to lie.
Before we dive into the many questions I have for you. I’m sitting here in Boulder. It’s a beautiful, beautiful community. Tell me a little bit about when you were in Boulder. I know you were here not that long ago, and I was surprised to learn that you’re a Buff. How did that come about? Are you originally from Boulder?
Matt Kuerbis: Not from Boulder, but from Colorado Springs. I grew up in Colorado Springs. My dad was a professor at Colorado College in Colorado Springs.
Kirk Bachmann: Oh my gosh, great school!
Matt Kuerbis: Great school. I had the opportunity to go to Colorado College, but my ability to be a good student at that time was not the best.
Kirk Bachmann: We’re all in that bucket. That’s why I went to Oregon. That’s why I was a Duck!
Matt Kuerbis: I spent my first year of college at Western State in Gunnison. Then I transferred up to Boulder because I wanted the big school. My brother was at school at Boulder. That was back in ‘91 when I got to Boulder. I was there, graduated from Boulder in ‘94, and that’s where I got my cooking start.
Kirk Bachmann: Where in Boulder did you cook first?
Matt Kuerbis: So my first job was washing dishes. The position was called hasher at a sorority house.
Kirk Bachmann: Oh, I love that! I love that! That’s hilarious.
Matt Kuerbis: That was the first job. That opened the door to the Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant, which is an institution in Boulder.
Kirk Bachmann: It is indeed.
Matt Kuerbis: Back then, it was still a hole in the wall. It was down on South Pearl on the other side of the Pearl Street Mall. Just a small little restaurant. While I was there, they changed to where they are now.
Kirk Bachmann: Got it. It’s just such a small world. I think you may know this – maybe you don’t – I went to high school in Gunnison. My family moved. My dad’s a pastry chef, and we moved to Colorado in the 70s. Crested Butte was just starting to come around. Back then, it was called Western State College. It was a really cool place because maybe three or four thousand students at the most. People came there to ski and grab an education in their spare time. We had a hotel and restaurant there. All of our worker bees were students at Western. It’s really developed over the years, though. They are now a full-blown university. Western Colorado University.
Matt Kuerbis: I didn’t know that.
Kirk Bachmann: Similar population. Great football team, by the way. Little known fact – completely useless trivia – but they’re football stadium is the highest elevation football stadium in the world at over 8000 feet. The Mountaineers are doing great. The campus is beautiful.
Matt Kuerbis: They’re kicking long field goals.
Kirk Bachmann: They just hang in the air for moments. It’s just great. But what a small world!
Matt Kuerbis: That is crazy. Yeah. We have orbited around each other for many years.
Kirk Bachmann: And then right in the middle of that orbit is Brian Williams. I did my thing with Brian in the ‘80s at the Benson Hotel in Portland. Of course, you worked with him at Le Cordon Bleu there. Six degrees of Brian Williams. I love those stories.
Matt Kuerbis: That’s absolutely true. He’s been there. He gave me my first job and then promotion at Le Cordon Bleu.
The Call of Teaching
Kirk Bachmann: Isn’t that something? Those were incredible days.
Let’s talk about you and teaching the business of food. If you’re cool with it, I’d love to start with your role here at Escoffier. You’re teaching plant-based culinary arts, and you’re teaching hospitality and restaurant operations management. In my mind and in everything you read today, those are two really, really areas at the forefront of our industry and where our industry is headed.
As we’re getting ready for this, I read a quote of yours. It says basically, “Success in the food industry takes creativity, adaptability, and business savvy.” Love that word. “I teach you. I teach to inspire confidence in both craft and entrepreneurship, helping students turn their passion into a sustainable career.” In many ways, that really captures this dual approach. How did you get there? How did you get into teaching? What made you pursue a master’s degree after all those years in professional kitchens? It’s a very attractive path for a lot of people. You can get back to students. I did it. You did. Many, many others did it. Brian Williams did it. Walk us through that journey.
Matt Kuerbis: Sure. I think many of us in the culinary industry, we get to a point where we’re like, “Wow. Am I going to work nights at weekends for the rest of my life. And holidays, things like that.” That was one piece. “How am I going to pivot, and what am I going to do to change that up a little bit?” You start thinking about things like having benefits and stuff like that that come into play. 401K and stuff. I started thinking that.
In addition to that, I come from a family of educators. My father was an educator for his entire career. My brother is a professor. I was like, that’s kind of in the family blood. “Okay, I think I’ll go back and get a master’s degree in education and start working towards the education pathway.”
I did not think, however, “Oh, I’m going to teach culinary.” It just did not come into my thought process. I thought I was going to be a fourth grade teacher. I went back to school in Portland and got my master’s degree. I graduated in the springtime.
Kirk Bachmann: Right before summer.
Matt Kuerbis: Right before summer. I had a summer of “What am I going to do? I need a job.” I started looking around. I had heard that there was the Le Cordon Bleu school or Western Culinary Institute. I thought, “Maybe I could teach in the culinary school.” I looked, and there happened to be an opening. I went into the interview and brought my ten years or so of culinary experience, and then my master’s degree in education. That was a good combo for teaching at the culinary school.
Kirk Bachmann: We offer degrees and all of that. It’s so interesting to go back. Would you do it the same way again? The next question is just phenomenal because we’re going to start talking about plant-based cuisine, and when did that [take off?] Again, you and I are very, very familiar with Oregon. I went to school in Eugene. In many ways, plant-based cuisine – we may not have called it that in Oregon – but it’s been around for a long time. It feels like it kind of exploded into the culinary world. It’s definitely not a trend any more. It’s legit, with great opportunities. What drew you? Fast forward: what drew you into teaching plant-based culinary arts? Not to put you on the spot, Matt, but what are the biggest opportunities for cooks, and restaurateurs, and entrepreneurs, and chefs in that space right now?
Matt Kuerbis: My dirty secret in the plant-based cuisine world is that I eat everything.
Kirk Bachmann: That’s a good secret. That’s a good secret.
Matt Kuerbis: That’s a good secret, but for me, it came from my wife, who when we met was vegetarian and had been gluten-free, dairy-free for twenty years or so. Somebody introduces you along the way. “Hey, this is the way I eat. I feel like I should be able to eat this way wherever I go, going out to restaurants. I would like to have the opportunity to eat out and also not have to eat an iceberg lettuce salad.” When I cook at home, those are the thoughts that are in my head all the time. How can I cook for this person and also cook for me? Lots of that experimenting over the years. “How can I produce something that tastes good that’s going to satisfy my wife’s needs?”
Then, it’s combined with a pillar of what I teach my students all the time of hospitality. We’re in the hospitality industry, and we’re here to ensure that our customers are going to have a good experience. Whatever our needs are, that, I believe, is something we should be meeting. I remember in the early days having chefs around me that were like, “Oh, these people with their gluten-free things!” I was always like, “No, we have to serve them. This is really important.” That’s our job, and I teach that to my students. One of your pillars needs to be that we always have to remember, we are hospitality. We’re here to make people happy and to create a wonderful experience for them. If that means their diet requires a particular pathway – gluten-free, dairy-free, plant-based – then we need to meet them there and create something that’s delicious.
Now, with everybody playing in that world, we can create wonderful, beautiful food that’s plant-based.
The Doors Have to Stay Open
Kirk Bachmann: I’ve got chills a little bit. One, I’m proud that you’re one of our teachers and that this is your message. Thank you for that. You said a lot of really, really important things right there. And you’re right. When I think about dining out, it’s an experience. You want to be able to go out and enjoy yourself and not have that anxiety and stress around what you’re going to eat. Or, you shouldn’t have to compromise what you’d like to try. You should have a choice. You said it: you should eat what you want. I know this isn’t just a thought, it’s a fact, that there is so much more literacy around food insecurities. You mentioned gluten and other ways that people like to eat and must eat in many cases. I sense that you feel, too, that we’re meeting people where they are today. That’s your message to students. You need to meet your guests where they are. Be honest, and try to help them have an incredible experience.
Let’s wrap hospitality and restaurant operations management into that because this is a space where a lot of cooks and educators can potentially stumble. Cook beautiful food, but sometimes the business fundamentals are overlooked. What’s the number one reason that a restaurant will go out of business? It’s not in the dining room most of the time; it’s walking out the back door. In your experience and the way you approach this educational piece with your students, why is it so critical for culinary students to understand operations? And not to forget about cooking – that’s the passion – but why is it so important? We’re going to record this answer. No pressure.
Matt Kuerbis: At the end of the day, the doors have to stay open. That means financial management and having a good sense of where all the money goes. Fortunately in our industry, it’s not too difficult to do the math, which is a fear for many people. I have taught the math around running a restaurant and running a business for a while. For those who are fearful of it, I always say I had a math teacher once, who was at Le Cordon Bleu, who said this to me about math. He said, “We’re dealing with percentages, decimals, a little bit of fractions, but everybody goes to the side of a road.” He explained it this way. “You go to the side of a road and you look to see the distance that you have to cross. Then you look down the street and you see where that car is coming. It’s speeding. It’s a moving car, and you’re making a calculation in your brain, ‘Can I make it to the other side of that road without getting hit?’ It’s a very complex equation that you’re working through in your head. You do complex math. It’s just that we’re writing it down on paper and putting more definition to it.”
I’ve encountered a lot of students over the years that are like, “Okay. You’re right. I can do complex math.” I believe people aren’t bad at math; they just don’t do it. There you go. But we have to keep the doors open. It’s really a matter of putting the structure in place so they know, “These are the steps I need to go through in order to have this success.” It’s not zen and the art of running a kitchen; it’s a science, and we’ve got to put it down on paper and understand what it is. You have to have the patience to do that, which is one of the skills.
You have to develop patience. That’s the skill you have to develop, not math.
Kirk Bachmann: Not math. I love the analogy of crossing the road, too. I think about – and you probably remember these days, too – I can remember being on the line during lunch at my restaurant. Of course, that’s when the fish vendor would walk in wanting to know what I wanted for the evening. So much of it is muscle memory, too, and so much of it is almost common sense. You’re cooking away. The vendor’s yapping behind you, letting you know how much the halibut is going to be per pound. Without even thinking about it while you’re plating a dish or asking a server to come grab something out of the window from the pass, you’re calculating in your head a six-ounce portion is going to cost me X after waste, and this is what I’m going to be able to charge for it. It’s just like standing on the side of the road and calculating in your mind how fast that car is driving and how much time do you have to get across the street. I love that.
I honestly, truly believe that those stories are the best way for students to learn, to get it. You’re meeting them at a place where you can be comfortable. I always say that when we hire new instructors, my number one question is always, “Are they a storyteller? Do they have stories to tell? Can they motivate people?” You’ve still got to get through the learning objectives, but I love, love, love the stories.
As we segue into HYCH here, I love this. You got your master’s degree in education. I got my master’s degree in education. I remember during that time, more than ever – in fact, Matt, I have to tell you where I’m going with this is that you’re never a better teacher than when you’re learning yourself. Do you remember those days when you were at Portland State, grabbing your degree, you were probably yapping away at anyone who would listen because you were learning every single day?
Matt Kuerbis: Absolutely.
Kirk Bachmann: You go first. I’m so excited to talk about this topic.
Matt Kuerbis: Well, you get to turn around and take what you’re learning and put it into practice immediately when you’re going to do your student teaching.
Vision and Community in Business
Kirk Bachmann: It’s just natural. It just happens. You were probably on a call a few weeks ago when we brought everyone in the company together and we were talking about AI and the AI assisted grading pilot that we’re working on. I jumped into a course at Stanford, which I’m just wrapping up. I’ve got to tell you, you’re never too old, you’re never too young, but everyday over the last several months, I feel like I’ve learned something. It’s less about memorization. It’s more about practical application. “Oh my gosh, I just learned this. How can we apply this quickly into the initiative that we’re working with.”
Here’s what I find fascinating about your position in particular. You’re not just teaching theory. You’re actively running H-Y-C-H. HYCH. You’re dealing with vendors. You’re managing inventory. You’re handling distribution. You’re living what you teach. You’re not just reading from a book; you’re informing students about what you’re working on every single day. Can you take a moment and just share with us how your experience running your company informs you what to teach in restaurant operations? Or even in plant-based cuisine. What real-world lessons do you bring into the classroom every single day?
Matt Kuerbis: One of the first questions in the class that I teach, or one of the classes that I teach, is what’s your vision? What do you want to be doing? What’s your inspiration? So many students talk about the business that they want to open. I love to see that in Week One, which is happening right now. I get to read through comments on what they’re all dreaming about. Then, I get to convey to them the actual steps that it takes to move forward on that dream. I think that’s our job as instructors, to understand what their goals are, what their dream is, and to help them keep their dream alive as they move through school. To help give them little pieces, tidbits along the way that will help them build that structure so that when they graduate, they’re like, “Okay. I’ve got this big structure of this document that I can refer to and real-world steps that I can take to move the needle a little bit towards my goal.”
In that, I think there are some very concrete, specific things that students can do to start realizing the dream right away, things like contact your Secretary of State and register your business name. If you’re going to cook – which so many of our students are interested in creating a product or selling their barbecue sauce, whatever it is, baking cheesecakes at home and selling to their community – so doing the steps to create the unique selling proposition. Why is somebody going to buy your product versus the other hot sauce that’s on the shelf?
Kirk Bachmann: And there’s a lot of hot sauces on the shelf. How do you differentiate yourself? How do you stand out?
Matt Kuerbis: Absolutely. Grandma’s recipe.
Kirk Bachmann: What I love about this conversation – and I know it’s true for you as it is with so many of our guests – we jump on, and we talk for an hour about your experiences and your past. What’s left out of that conversation – even when you’re in front of your students and you’re explaining how you run your business and how you came up through the industry – what’s missing from those conversations is the years and year and years and hours and hours and hours of sleepless nights and business plans that didn’t work. I always like to provide that disclosure. When we talk about this in very genuine and almost celebratory ways, we can never forget the work that went into all of this. That’s the message we always have to remind people. The stories are great, but the work has to take place.
I think in your intro what I loved was this intersection of the craft – and I love that tagline more than anything, the craft of cooking. You talk about inspiring confidence in both the craft and entrepreneurship. What are some of the most common misconceptions that students – or anyone – has about the business side of food?
Matt Kuerbis: What I discovered. I didn’t start my own business until I was in my mid-forties. I always thought it was a go-it-alone kind of thing, which it is to a certain degree, but the amount of help that exists out there to make your business successful blew my mind. The fact of the matter is, in the United States, we are business. Everything is business. That means people want you to succeed. When business succeeds, our country succeeds. The amount of help that is out there.
In the beginning, we were like, “What do we do?” We didn’t know about co-packers and how this whole process works. I certainly wasn’t very good at managing my books in the beginning, but there is an organization called SCORE that’s out there, which are mainly retired business owners that want to give back. We got a SCORE mentor for free. That person worked with us for I think a year, maybe two years. Once a month, we’d get together and talk about, “Okay, this is what we’re going to do. This is how we’re going to format the cash flow spreadsheet.” All those important pieces of running a business. There are countless grants out there – not countless, but there are lots of grants that you can apply for out there. There are many organizations that are nonprofit. You can apply and get mentorship with their business. That, I think, is the most common misconception, that you’ve got to go it alone. There are so many people that want to help you.
And, with Escoffier and the students that are coming through, us as instructors, that’s what we get a kick out of. When our students contact us later and say, “Hey, I’m working on this thing. How should I approach this?” You get to continue to teach.
An Entrepreneurial Journey
Kirk Bachmann: I love that. I love that. And point them in the right direction or at least give them advice.
Let’s jump into your entrepreneurial journey. The idea to the shelf, if you will. I love the stories of the origin, especially the ones that start with solving a problem. You don’t want to burn your face off. Yours began in Costa Rica. We’re going to come back to that in a minute because when I was doing some research on your business, I stumbled – and I think I knew this. I think I knew you were doing culinary retreats, but I knew the one in Italy. I didn’t know about the one in Costa Rica. You call it a fun and logistical nightmare. Tell us a little bit more about that and how that all came about?
Matt Kuerbis: Sure. My wife and I had moved to Costa Rica. I was the head chef at a retreat center down there. In that process, we started HYCH as another revenue stream. After we got HYCH going, we were like, “We really want to have a good time still.” We had come back to the United States. We wanted to still visit Costa Rica. We had been serving people that had come down for yoga retreats and wellness retreats. We were like, “Why couldn’t we do that same thing?” We started planning our first Costa Rica retreat back in 2019. We had a group of people ready to go. We just really felt that our world needs more sitting down at the table together, eating food together, creating food together. That’s why we started those retreats, just for a good time while we were trying to run our business. We wanted a good time.
But our first retreat was supposed to leave on March 18, 2020, which if you remember, it was like the day that everything shut down. We had to cancel it, but we rebooted and did our first retreat two years later to Costa Rica. We took groups of people down just to cook and relax and eat food together.
Kirk Bachmann: Isn’t that great? Food is a beautiful medium to bring people together. Where in Costa Rica are you or were you?
Matt Kuerbis: We were in southern Costa Rica up in the mountains. If you go down the Pacific coast of Costa Rica – many people know Manuel Antonia, which is a big national park in Costa Rica. Further down the road, there’s a surf town called Domincal. If you drive up into the mountains an hour and a half from there, that’s where we were. It was so cool to be [there]. There’s the beach in Costa Rica, which is amazing, but getting up into the mountains is a whole different experience, and it’s incredible.
Kirk Bachmann: I’m looking at a map right now. Was that close to the Osa Peninsula?
Matt Kuerbis: Not quite that far south, but getting down there. You’ll probably see a town called Dominical or Uvita.
Kirk Bachmann: I love that. Again, six degrees. Someone who I graduated high school with in Gunnison – her name is Lana – she has a place called the Luna Lodge on the Osa Peninsula. She’s been there for forty years. She often posts and talks about [her experiences.] The last time I talked to her and her mom. The mountains are so beautiful there, the rainforests and all of that. I just love it. I need to book my flight sooner than later.
Let’s go back to the retreat center and what sparked the HYCH idea. You launched that back in 2016. You’ve mentioned the early days. You’ve seen Farmer Lee on some of our shows. He talks about farmers’ markets, and he has his own. This idea of starting to introduce products to guests and locals through coolers. That’s grassroots. What did you learn selling directly to customers at farmers’ markets? It gives me chills to even say that. Again, I’m not trying to minimize the work. It’s a lot. What were some of those big challenges going from homemade batches to a shelf-stable, commercially safe and viable product?
Matt Kuerbis: The first sauce idea had been brewing in my head for a long time, years before I started HYCH. In Portland, coming from Colorado, I was a pork green chili fan. Getting up to Oregon, I was like, “There’s no pork green chili up here. Somebody needs to bottle pork green chili and sell it.” Those were the initial twinklings in my brain about this. Then, bottling a product with meat in it is a whole different game than bottling a vegetarian product. Okay, I’m not going to do that.
But in Costa Rica, I had started with the guajillo sauce, which was just a sauce I was making down there and putting out for the guests. Coming back to Oregon, I had that recipe developed. I was going to a place called the Happy Bibimbap House in Salem. I was like, “We should do a hot sauce with the sauce that goes on bibimbap.” I created that one.
I had the sauces. We had to call the Department of Agriculture to get our kitchen certified to use as a production kitchen. There’s a lot of laws around cottage laws. That’s how students can get started. A lot of rules you have to follow to get into this cottage law category, which allows you to produce food at home, certify your kitchen, and then go sell at farmers’ market. That’s where students can go and get started. Understand cottage law. It’s different in every state; it may not even be called cottage law in your state.
We could bottle sauce in the kitchen, but we couldn’t do shelf stable. I couldn’t bottle it and cap it and keep it warm – not warm, but just not in the fridge. I had to keep it in a cooler. You could put a label on it, and at that point you didn’t need a bar code. You needed your ingredients, but that was pretty much it – your ingredients and your logo. We started doing that, dumping it in the cooler, going to the farmers’ market, getting a booth there, and started selling.
The other thing I did was Hot Sauce Happy Hour. I chose a bar in Portland. Do you know Prost! in Portland?
Kirk Bachmann: Of course. Yeah.
Matt Kuerbis: Started advertising with social media. “Hey, we’re going to be at Prost! Fridays at four o’clock. Come for Hot Sauce Happy Hour.” Have a drink, talk, chat about hot sauce and food, and sell sauce there. Started selling sauce there. It really was grassroots, bootstrapping the process.
Moving though, from that to being ready for grocery store sales, which was what I wanted, I had no idea about co-packers. The process. I was looking at bottling equipment and setting up my own bottling line. That was hundreds of thousands of dollars. “I can’t. I can’t do this. How do people do this?” Then I learned about co-packers. “Oh, there are co-manufacturers out there that will take your recipe, and do all the work for you.” They’ll get the FDA approval. It’s called the process authority letter that you have to get for each product that you create.
I spent six months looking at co-packers. I flew to California. I went throughout my community. Found one that was close to us – thirty minutes away – that worked. Went to them. That’s the process. When you need to move from your farmers’ market, bootstrapping, grassroots operation to something more serious, I think going to a co-packer is a great thing to do. It’s not necessary. You can do your own operation, but it’s a great thing. Now you’re getting into the financial part. “How much am I paying this person to create this product? Now can I create a product and actually make money off of it.”
Kirk Bachmann: Such good lessons for students. Things you just don’t think about. Ironically enough, several years ago there was a chef instructor here who started a hot sauce locally, and it wasn’t until he found a co-packer that he could really scale. He was able to scale and ultimately do that a hundred percent full time.
Matt Kuerbis: What’s the name of that sauce?
From Hoss to HYCH
Kirk Bachmann: Oh, gosh, I’ll look it up while I ask you this next question. It’s local here. I’ll find it in just a second.
I want to talk about how you re-branded from Hoss Soss to HYCH – Heat You Can Handle. I love all of that. But Hoss Soss is a pretty cool name as well. Why did you re-brand? How did you develop the whole selling proposition of global flavors? I love that.
Matt Kuerbis: There were a few different pathways in there. You have to create a unique selling proposition, as you know, with a new business. What’s unique? Why are people going to buy yours? At the different chef gigs I was doing, I would make my sauces. Hoss was nickname. Hoss Soss and sauce spelled S-O-S-S, that’s how that came about. But we couldn’t trademark that name.
In the beginning, I did my own USPTO, which is the Patent and Trademark Office search for Hoss Soss. What I didn’t know at the time is that even if it’s phonetic, if it’s spelled different, but sounds the same, that can cause a problem. If you’re in the same category, which for me is condiments, your name has to be really unique. You can’t cross over. There can’t be any mistake that “Oh, this is the same product or the same company.” Hoss Soss, there was a Hoss Sauce on the East Coast spelled differently. H-O-S-S-A-U-C-E squished together. I missed that in my search for similar names.
With Hoss Soss I applied for the trademark, and at the same time, I applied for the Heat You Can Handle trademark because that was our tagline.
Kirk Bachmann: Oh, okay. That’s smart.
Matt Kuerbis: We were Hoss Soss, and it’s Heat You Can Handle. Low-heat hot sauce. Heat You Can Handle came back approved. We owned that trademark, but Hoss Soss got denied. Then, you’re in this process of “What are we going to do?”
Kirk Bachmann: We’ve got a tag line but no name.
Matt Kuerbis: Yeah. How are we going to change this? We spent literally two years going through every name you could possibly think of for hot sauce, and everything is trademarked. This is one reason why you see names that are kind of weird now, combinations of numbers and letters.
Kirk Bachmann: That makes so much sense.
Matt Kuerbis: You have a finite amount of clever names that you can come up with.
Kirk Bachmann: Yeah. Carlos’s is called Chiporro. C-H-I-P-O-R-R-O.
Matt Kuerbis: Okay. I haven’t heard of it.
Kirk Bachmann: That’s Chef Carlos’s. I think I told you a couple of years ago about another buddy that I have here locally. His name is David. He’s got a company called Seed Ranch.
Matt Kuerbis: Oh, yeah. I know Seed Ranch. Great Sauce.
Scaling from Farmers’ Markets to Grocery Stores
Kirk Bachmann: He’s a great guy, too. They have a lot of fun with that.
So here’s where it gets really real for our students. The stories are really fascinating to me. Students are going to be like, “How do I get there?” I want to be really honest here. You’ve created some really distinct flavors. You’ve won awards. That’s a big deal. There are – I’m going to say hundreds – but there’s probably thousands of hot sauces out there. People grab at the sexy label. For me, I’ll be completely transparent, I like the idea of heat that I can handle because I can’t handle a lot of heat. I just can’t. You end up in hundreds of stores around the country.
If you could just walk us through the journey, what are the milestones? The journey from the farmers’ market to retail distribution. You’ve got the co-packer. You’ve got the trademarking. You’ve got a business model that works. “Okay, I can make some money doing this.” But now, it’s retail distribution. Do you do that yourself, too?
Matt Kuerbis: In a way. Over the years, what I’ve worked to do is to shift a lot of the responsibilities of the day-to-day running to external companies. In the beginning, I didn’t want to be in the kitchen filling bottles every day. That’s where the co-packer comes in. Shift the responsibility to this outside company.
Kirk Bachmann: That’s what they do. They do it safely.
Matt Kuerbis: Yeah. They’re dialed. That’s their responsibility. Then what was happening was I was two different things. You have to shift to become the salesman. You’re no longer the passionate cook that’s creating these beautiful sauces and tinkering in the kitchen. You are now the salesman, which is a difficult transition for people who are in our world, passionate, driven people, love the food, love the creation. But you have to make that shift, and that’s probably the biggest hurdle to get over.
Kirk Bachmann: And you probably know the most about [your product]. You could hire someone to do that, but it’s not you. I want to buy my hot sauce from Matt, not this salesperson over here.
Matt Kuerbis: With a caveat on that, which we’ll get to. Eventually, you don’t want your face being part of the business.
Kirk Bachmann: That’s another piece of the puzzle.
Matt Kuerbis: Another piece. But before that, being the salesman got so I was in the car driving to stores, going up and down the coast, selling, selling. Then, building the e-commerce at the same time. I was in the basement or in the garage packing orders. How do I handle all this stuff? Eventually, I was like, “I don’t want that responsibility either.”
Kirk Bachmann: I’m just going to sell this business. That’s what I’m going to do.
Matt Kuerbis: But there’s a point to it all. We found a shipper. It’s called 3PL. This is a different company. Once we create the sauce at the co-packer, I don’t even see it. It just gets shipped to the shipper. They store it, and they pack all the orders on the day-to-day basis. Now I’m not wrapping things in bubble wrap and spending my time doing that. Now I’m just focused on sales. Now I’m going out to the restaurants and the grocery stores and making the contact to do the sales. But I don’t really want to do that either. So you hire brokers.
In this whole process, you have to ensure. You have to go back to the math. Does the math work? In the beginning, doing farmers’ markets, you get high margins. You produce a bottle of sauce for two or three dollars and you sell it for ten or eleven dollars. You get a good margin. But when you sell to a grocery store, and you have all these people who make the sauce. You have to pay the people who are distributing the sauce, all those people get a piece of the pie, so your profit wedge just starts to shrink. But if everybody else is doing the work for you, that’s okay. You’re running the business. You’re being profitable, and it’s starting to turn into this humming machine [where] all the pieces are in place, and you just have to manage that from up high. Then continue to find the new customers.
Practical Realities
Kirk Bachmann: And a lesson for students. I was actually going to ask what the biggest gap between what students learn in culinary school and what they actually need to know to run a business. You’ve kind of addressed that. Scale probably comes into this. If you can maintain your costs now that you’ve brought in all these different components, then all of a sudden all you need is people to buy your hot sauce.
But Matt, for students who do want to start their own food product or a restaurant – and I’m sure you have these conversations in the classroom and such – what’s step one? I’ve got ten things listed here. Great product. Great idea. Distribution model. Co-packer. What’s step one?
Matt Kuerbis: Step one, I think there are two different pathways. One is there’s a step one if you’re not exactly sure what the giant vision is. Then, there’s a different pathway if you know, “I’m building this company. It’s going to grow like this, and this is how I’m going to exit and get out.” Step one is just understanding that if you don’t take a step forward, if you’re waiting for the perfect vision, if you’re waiting for all the pieces to fall in place, you’re wasting time. Step one is registering the business. Get your name and go register it.
Kirk Bachmann: That’s a boring step one, but it’s very, very important. I’m glad you bring that up. I’m in the grocer. I’m on the shelf. I love that. Simple. Register your business.
Matt Kuerbis: You could do that in an afternoon. It’s going to cost you a hundred and twenty, a hundred and fifty bucks. You have to have a name. Maybe you need to spend a little time thinking about what you want to call it, but you can always shift that as you go along. I think people get too nervous or they don’t know those simple steps that need to be taken to move forward. It’s all about moving that needle just a little bit. We teach this in food service management. Don’t let perfection get in the way of progress.
Kirk Bachmann: Sometimes speed and impact is good. Perfection can wait for a minute.
Here’s a little bit of a tougher question. You talked about covid and how you had to pivot or even wait. What has your journey with entrepreneurship taught you – and how do you pass it on to students – about resilience?
Matt Kuerbis: Oh gosh! How many times have we all been like, “I’m not doing this anymore.”
Kirk Bachmann: It just keeps getting tougher at certain times. I imagine. I’m trying to tie this[in]. Talk about resilience, but I bet it made you a better teacher.
Matt Kuerbis: Absolutely. You get clarity. Clarity never stops getting clearer over the years. The problems keep presenting themselves.
Kirk Bachmann: It’s life.
Matt Kuerbis: You deal with that problem. Now you know how to deal with that problem and the picture gets clearer. But then, there’s another problem, and you work to deal with it, and the picture gets more clear. That’s just over and over and over again. So, One, recognizing that’s the way it’s going to be. If you’re going to journey down this pathway, you’re going to hit problem after problem.
You have to remember a few things. You have to remember what drove you in the beginning, the thing that really feeds you. We were talking about this yesterday, my wife and I, because she’s fifty percent of this business. Her driver is the newness, a new sauce. We haven’t done a new sauce in a long time. I can see her interest in the business wane because of that. We had this conversation two days ago with some other sauce makers. We figured out how we could make some small batches of sauces and get that creative energy back in. It really lit her fire. Watching that. You have to know what lights your fire and remember to bring that back in as you’re going through this process.
Kirk Bachmann: I love that. I think it’s incredibly thoughtful of you to mention your wife, Catharine, as your equal business owner. Very wise, my friend. Very wise to say that. Give Catharine our best.
I think I know what you’re going to say here. I’m sorry. I just think these are such great lessons for so many of our students who come to us looking for what they can do next, whether it’s a food truck, or a business like this, or they want to open up their own restaurant, whatever it is. What, in your mind over the years, has been the most surprising business skill that you needed that others may need that has nothing to do with cooking? Absolutely nothing. You’ve talked about the co-packing, and you’ve talked about all of the steps, but what’s the one thing that just really kind of surprised you?
Matt Kuerbis: It’s funny because it’s not that surprising when I look back on it, but hindsight is 20/20.
Kirk Bachmann: You’ve had time to digest.
Matt Kuerbis: It’s ensuring. You’re creating a business, which means eventually you want to sell it, maybe.
Kirk Bachmann: I love that you said that. Of course! It’s the dream.
Matt Kuerbis: You want to build this thing, and hopefully somebody down the line is going to go, “I want to give you millions of dollars for this.” It’s not something that I started this thinking about, but as I went through the process, you realize that you may have a better chance of that big exit down the road if you start with that vision in the beginning. It’s counter-intuitive to start a business thinking, “How am I going to sell this?”
The Continual Pivot
Kirk Bachmann: But it’s not wrong. Everyone goes into business for different reasons. Sometimes they want to leave it to their children or scale and really create something amazing. I’m just glad you said that because it’s okay for a student that’s learning business to understand that some businesses are built to sell to someone else. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
We’re going to keep you busy at Escoffier for quite some time – but what’s next for HYCH? You kind of started to touch on that a little bit. We’ve got to get Catharine pumped up here.
Matt Kuerbis: What’s next is the continual pivot. You have to continually move your vision and keep bringing things in and building in different ways that you never would have thought when you started the business. This year, we added half-gallon jugs for restaurant service because we’re trying to get away from farmers’ markets because that’s a time suck. “Okay, I’ve got to get up, get going.” Every weekend for the past eight years, every weekend, farmers’ markets, farmers’ markets.
Kirk Bachmann: Do you go to the one up by Portland State?
Matt Kuerbis: We do not do that one. There are rules at that one that we don’t meet. You have to buy your products. If you create a bottled product, you’ve got to support the community right there.
Kirk Bachmann: It’s a very well-known, massive market.
Matt Kuerbis: We did Beaverton for many years.
Kirk Bachmann: Salem has a decent market.
Matt Kuerbis: Great market, similar to the Beaverton market, which we also did. That’s been our home market for eight years. But the next pathway – speaking of sales – is we are now working on how we are going to set this up to be able to sell to somebody. That takes some work which starts with ensuring that when you do your financial books, typically Quickbooks, that you set them up properly from the beginning. That, you may need to hire help to do that. We did not hire help. Boy, did we mess up. We are literally paying for some mistakes that we had made years ago in trying to restructure and get everything to clean-looking, very organized books so that somebody who might want to buy this can easily go in and try to understand all the numbers over the years and what the projections for the future are going to be.
Chef Matt Kuerbis’s Ultimate Dish
Kirk Bachmann: You know, that single bit of advice right there, Matt, may be the most important advice. Because if I’m Kirk buying your business, HYCH, I’m going to want to know all of that. What am I getting into? What do my expenses look like? What does my potential look like? That’s brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant.
Oh my gosh! I don’t know where the time goes. What a great chat! Thank you for taking the time, but I’m not going to let you go until I ask my final question. The name of the show is The Ultimate Dish, so in your mind – or Catharine’s, or both of your minds – what’s the ultimate dish?
Matt Kuerbis: Oh my gosh. Anything with HYCH hot sauce.
Kirk Bachmann: I totally walked into that one! I walked into that.
What do you like to put HYCH on? What’s your favorite flavor, and what do you like to put it on?
Matt Kuerbis: Well, we’ve got five flavors. My two flavors are the bibimbap and the pineapple.
Kirk Bachmann: I love pineapple hot sauce.
Matt Kuerbis: Sweet heat.
Kirk Bachmann: Oh, sweet heat. I love it.
Matt Kuerbis: So good. I think, really what I’ve been doing lately is smoked chicken thighs with the bibimbap. Then a nice ciabatta bun, toasted perfectly, then a slaw. Sort of a Nashville hot chicken sandwich, just smoked chicken thighs. Oh. It’s so good.
Kirk Bachmann: I like it. We haven’t had that. We’ve done over 150 episodes. I like it. I like it a lot.
What’s left for you today? Are you going to enjoy the day, or are you doing some business here on the coast?
Matt Kuerbis: I’ve got to grade. I’ve got students to attend to.
Kirk Bachmann: Atta boy! Atta boy! That’s the right answer right there. My gosh.
Matt Kuerbis: I will say this. We have gotten the business to a point where, although I could spend every day really on sales and getting out there, it is now running itself. I sent a purchase order off, and the sauce is produced. I ensure that the shipping is happening every day. I only have to put a few hours every day into the HYCH stuff. That’s great. It’s great to get a company to that point where I should be working hard on it, but I like to teach.
Kirk Bachmann: I love it.
Matt Kuerbis: This is where I like spending my time.
Kirk Bachmann: You deserve that ability to step back a little bit, watch the business do it’s thing. Thanks for sharing. It’s so good to see you. So good to discover a few things that we continue to have in common. Thanks for all you do for our Escoffier students.
Matt Kuerbis: I’m going to come by. I’m coming to Boulder in November to watch the Buffs.
Kirk Bachmann: November’s the perfect month. We’ve got a crazy October, but we’ll be open arms in November, buddy.
Matt Kuerbis: All right. I’ll come say hi.
Kirk Bachmann: Thank you for listening to the Ultimate Dish podcast, brought to you by Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts. Visit escoffier.edu/podcast to find any materials mentioned during the podcast, including notes, links and other resources. And if you can, please leave us a rating on Apple or Spotify, and subscribe to support our show. This helps us reach more aspiring individuals ready to take the next step toward their dream careers. Thanks for listening.