The Story of Smitty Sauce

  Smitty Sauce has been around for 30+ years and was perfected by my father in law John P Smith.  He started making Smitty Sauce in 1990 and continued delivering small batches to friends and family for 32 years. He passed the recipe down to my wife and I in 2022.  In honor of him we added the JP to the name and JP Smitty Sauce was born.  We started out small with a few single batches and a social media post and quickly realized that there was a huge demand for this amazing everything sauce. Initially we branded it with a tag line "Great on Chicken Ribs & Pizza" but quick feedback from our customers and countless pictures of the sauce in action we changed the labels and our tag line became "Great on Just About Everything". We decided after a few months that one flavor wasn't enough and we added a HOT version to pair with the Sweet or Original style.  In April of 2023 we applied and were accepted to participate in the Foodpreneur program through the Windsor Small Business Centre.  Over the next 6 months we learned so much about how to run and grow a small business in the food sector.  We continued to add retail partner locations and by the end of year 1 we were at 40.   

We were approached by a local Sobey's but we weren't quite ready yet. Our labels needed to be upgraded and we were able to pull from some of our knowledge we gained from the Foodpreneur program
to help us navigate through what was needed. We engaged the services of a local marketing company to help with our rebrand. After several revisions our new labels were ready to launch. In the process we changed the name of our hot to Mild Heat (because it just wasn't that hot) and also changed our tag line to "The Everything Sauce that Brings Your Food to Life". In January of 2024 our rebrand was launched. In February we launched our newest addition to the line up JP Smitty Seasoning. Continuing our tradition of
adding our products to not just meat and BBQ we encouraged people to try JP Smitty Seasoning on eggs and hashbrowns at breakfast to vegetables at lunch or dinner, even adding it to sweet corn. With the ungraded information added to our labels we were able to add our products to 2 local Sobey's locations and shortly after a local Independent Grocer.  We felt the product line just wasn't complete without a hotter version so in July 2024 at the Heatseeker Hot Sauce Festival we launched our Red Hot.  With 57 retail locations selling all of our JP Smitty products we were bursting at the seems and needed more space.  Happily we just secured a 400 sq ft retail space that we take possession of in September.  Sky's the limit to what the future holds for JP Smitty products. We were approached by a local Sobey's but we weren't quite ready yet.  Our labels needed to be upgraded and we were able to pull from some of our knowledge we gained from the Foodpreneur program to help us navigate through what was needed.  We engaged the services of a local marketing company to help with our rebrand.  After several revisions our new Labels were ready to launch.  In the process we changed the name of our hot to Mild Heat (because it just wasn't that hot) and also changed our tag line to "The Everything Sauce that Brings Your Food to Life".  In January of 2024 our rebrand was launched.  In February we launched our newest addition to the line up JP Smitty Seasoning.  Continuing our tradition of adding our products to not just meat and BBQ we encouraged people to try JP Smitty Seasoning on eggs and hashbrowns at breakfast to vegetables at lunch or dinner, even adding it to sweet corn.

   We will continue to focus on bringing a great flavorful product to market that brings your food to life..  The Gill Family is so excited to carry on this amazing tradition and once you try it you will be hooked, we promise. 

 

Jason, Laura, Grace and Ella Gill

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