Dirty Dick (Richard Westhaver) Dirty Dicks Hot Sauces Encore
The primary focus of this episode revolves around the illustrious figure of Richard Westhaver, affectionately known in culinary circles as Dirty Dick, who has made an indelible mark in the realm of hot sauces. As we delve into his remarkable journey, we uncover the genesis of his distinctive sauces, which originated from his early experiences in the Caribbean, where he was inspired by the vibrant flavors and culinary practices of the local populace. Throughout our discourse, we explore the myriad challenges he has faced in navigating the competitive landscape of the food industry, particularly the complexities of distribution and marketing that often thwart emerging entrepreneurs. Additionally, we engage in a thorough examination of the regulatory framework governing food production, emphasizing the importance of comprehending these nuances for anyone aspiring to enter this domain. Join us as we gain insights from Dirty Dick's wealth of experience and reflect on the evolving nature of consumer preferences in the hot sauce market.
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Painter Hills Natural Beef
- Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission
- Dirty Dick's Hot Sauces
- Heritage Steel
- Hammer Stahl
- Restaurant Depot
- Walmart
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Transcript
It's time for Barbecue Nation with jt so fire up your grill, light the charcoal, and get your smoker cooking.
Speaker A:Now from the Turn It Don't Burnet studios in Portland, here's jt.
Speaker B:Hey, everybody.
Speaker C:Welcome to the nation.
Speaker B:That's Barbecue Nation.
Speaker B:I'm JT along with Leanne.
Speaker B:We'd like to thank you for sharing your time with us this week.
Speaker B:We'd like to thank the folks at Painter Hills Natural Beef, beef the way nature intended, and also the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission from sea to plate.
Speaker B:Great stuff there.
Speaker B:Well, we've got a legend with us today, Richard Westhaver, known as Dirty Dick in the barbecue and hot sauce world.
Speaker B:And he's been a friend of Leanne's for a long, long time.
Speaker B:And so we invited him on the show, and I'm excited to talk to him.
Speaker B:Dick, how are you?
Speaker C:I'm doing great.
Speaker B:Good.
Speaker C:How are you guys doing?
Speaker B:We're good.
Speaker D:Really good.
Speaker D:We're good.
Speaker C:I think we're getting taught we can get together.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I got to ask you for our listeners, how'd you get the name Dirty Dick?
Speaker C:Dirty Dick.
Speaker C:Well, I had a barbecue team, late 80s, and I called myself Dirty Dick.
Speaker C:And the firemen that helped me, I had three firemen by the end of Friday night, they'd be so drunk, they'd be swaying and bobbing and weaving.
Speaker C:And I said, those are my legless wonders.
Speaker C:And then it stuck.
Speaker C:And my team was Dirty Dick and the leg was wonders after that.
Speaker B:I can appreciate that.
Speaker B:I think Leanne can, too.
Speaker D:I can.
Speaker B:So how did you make the jump from a competitive barbecue team into creating some of the best hot sauces in the world?
Speaker C:Well, actually, sauce came before the barbecue team.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker C:So I.
Speaker C:My family owned a house in the Caribbean, the island of Montserrat.
Speaker C:So for 30 years, we went and spent a lot of time in the Caribbean.
Speaker C:And we'd go shopping.
Speaker C:We.
Speaker C:You know, you live like the locals when you're down there, right?
Speaker C:You have an open air market every Saturday.
Speaker C:So we always went and shopped, and there'd be like 20 ladies selling their stuff.
Speaker C:They grew, and there was always peppers all over.
Speaker C:Habaneros, jalapenos, serranos.
Speaker C:And they all ate with peppers, and there was peppers on every table.
Speaker C:Pepper sauce.
Speaker C:And we slowly got into the swing of peppers with your food.
Speaker C:And we were all cooks.
Speaker C:My family owned restaurants, so we used to.
Speaker C:I said, I think I'll make hot sauce.
Speaker C:And I'd buy.
Speaker C:I bought a bunch of habaneros and I was making sauce.
Speaker C:You know, I kept making sauce, writing recipes and trying it, and I actually developed it on the island of Montserrat.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker C:The first one, the red one, Dirty Dick original.
Speaker B:That would be that one, I think, if you can see that.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So there's a lot of barbecue sauces, as you know.
Speaker B:I'm guessing there's got to be over a thousand different barbecue sauces out there these days.
Speaker B:I mean, there is.
Speaker B:You can't go into it.
Speaker B:You can't even go in the hardware store and not see barbecue sauces there.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah.
Speaker B:Hot sauces go hand in hand with that, but they're a little different.
Speaker B:When you started making a sauce, was it the logical step for you then to start selling it locally?
Speaker B:Or did you just try it with friends and family or walk us through that process?
Speaker C:All right, well, so I, I was writing recipes and I stumbled upon the.
Speaker C:My first one, I said, this is it.
Speaker C:I got the, I got the flavor down.
Speaker C:And how did I start?
Speaker C:I, like, I began cooking sauce and I needed one.
Speaker C:I helped my team when we, I had all these guys with me.
Speaker C:I had to pay for like four people.
Speaker C:So we had rooms, we had travel expenses.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:I said, why don't we sell my sauce at a, at the booth?
Speaker C:And I had grandma there.
Speaker C:She was like 80 years old, and we stuck her behind a table.
Speaker C:I came up with a label and I learned how to, how to, how to market it.
Speaker C:I learned how to get a nutritionist and do my label, and so I learned all that stuff.
Speaker C:And basically we started selling it at barbecue contest because I wanted to make the 500 bucks to pay for the rub.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah.
Speaker C:I just wanted to pay for the rug.
Speaker B:I, I love the fact that you did shameless promotion with your grandmother.
Speaker C:I, I love that you're out front.
Speaker C:Everyone goes, wow, Danny's here.
Speaker C:We gotta buy sauce from her.
Speaker C:I mean, how can you turn down an 80 year old lady going, come over here.
Speaker C:You want to try our sauce?
Speaker D:Exactly.
Speaker C:It works.
Speaker B:Did you ever meet, Meet her?
Speaker B:Leanne?
Speaker D:I don't recall meeting her.
Speaker C:I don't think she was ever in.
Speaker C:Where would we go?
Speaker C:Maryland.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:Bel Air.
Speaker C:Used to come compete with your dad.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker C:Wow.
Speaker D:So over the years, it's grown a lot.
Speaker D:And so where are you commercially now?
Speaker C:Well, now I have four sauces.
Speaker C:I'm working on my fifth.
Speaker C:I go ghost pepper sauce.
Speaker C:I've been working on that for over a year, so sales are good.
Speaker C:My Amazon, I sell over a thousand bottles a month on Amazon.
Speaker D:That's great.
Speaker C:Right up there in top 20.
Speaker C:And I've got a lot of clients.
Speaker C:I sell to Australia, England, Denmark, Iceland, basically.
Speaker C:And I have a lot of accounts in Marathon.
Speaker C:I'm not in any markets, no big supermarkets.
Speaker C:So it's all.
Speaker C:It's all off brands and it's all, you know, private distributors who buy my stuff.
Speaker B:Is that tough with.
Speaker B:With hot sauces?
Speaker B:I mean, I know how.
Speaker B:I know how tough it is with, with rubs and barbecue sauces.
Speaker B:I dipped my toe in that water a long time ago and then went.
Speaker B:Ran away.
Speaker B:But is it.
Speaker B:Is it harder with hot sauces because they're not as commonly used?
Speaker C:Well, I think.
Speaker C:Because I call it Dirty Dick's Hot Sauce.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:I think some people got turned off by.
Speaker B:Well, you can't help if they're prudes or whatever.
Speaker C:I could do about that, but I think I used to.
Speaker C:I pitched so many supermarkets and they just never pulled the trigger.
Speaker C:So I don't know if it's the name or I just didn't have the right connections.
Speaker C:But I haven't been able to get in any big market chains.
Speaker C:I do a lot of private sales.
Speaker B:I wouldn't think anybody would be offended by that name with.
Speaker B:All you gotta do is Turn on your TV at 8:00 at night and you hear much worse.
Speaker C:A lot worse than that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:And once you try it, I mean, just taste it.
Speaker D:Yeah, it's my favorite hot sauce by far.
Speaker C:That should do it.
Speaker C:But it doesn't do it for that.
Speaker D:I'm not just saying that because he's my friend, but it seriously is.
Speaker B:No, they're great sauces.
Speaker B:I mean, I've got the last.
Speaker B:He sent me a case or a dozen bottles and the ones I saved.
Speaker B:So when I knew I was going to do the show, I didn't open those.
Speaker B:The other one, some of them are already empty and, and like that.
Speaker B:So I really liked them.
Speaker B:But hot sauce just intrigues me because it's something that we've had a lot of people on the show.
Speaker B:Let me back up a second, Dick.
Speaker B:We've had a lot of people on the show talking about their barbecue sauces and they, they say, well, you know, we started this sauce in our family kitchen.
Speaker B:Typical story, great stories like that.
Speaker B:But they get into the, the market.
Speaker B:Trying to get into the market, I think would be a better way to say that.
Speaker B:They try to get into it and then they find out how difficult it is with stories more horrendous than what you were just saying.
Speaker B:You've pitched lots of markets.
Speaker B:Do you think that that's ever going to change or.
Speaker B:Because now we're seeing the amalgamation of all these huge, like Kroger's and Albertsons.
Speaker B:They're just, these chains are getting bigger and bigger and it's harder and harder, I think, to get product on the shelves.
Speaker C:I have, well, one distributor I've been selling to for years.
Speaker C:He called me a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker C:I didn't know what he was, who he was.
Speaker C:He said, dick, I'm a lawyer and also.
Speaker C:And I am a food broker and I represent Walmart.
Speaker C:He said, and I'm gonna pitch you to Walmart.
Speaker C:You know, you want 5%, which is okay, but.
Speaker C:So that was the only time anyone's ever said, I, I think I can get you into a big chain.
Speaker C:And it hadn't happened yet, but he talked to me about it.
Speaker B:Was that recently?
Speaker C:Yeah, within the last month.
Speaker C:I guess.
Speaker C:They buy once a year.
Speaker C:Yeah, they actually sit down and shop sauces once a year.
Speaker C:So I got to wait for that, whatever that time is.
Speaker C:He said he'd get back to me.
Speaker B:Can you handle that kind of volume?
Speaker C:I doubt it.
Speaker C:Because he said, he said, how many, how many sites do you have making your sauce?
Speaker C:I said, just one.
Speaker C:He said, well, he said, Marie Sharp ships.
Speaker C:He brokers hers.
Speaker C:She ships five pallets a month.
Speaker C:Five.
Speaker C:Not five pallets, five tractor trailer loads.
Speaker C:And, and that's like, you know, 40, 40 pallets.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:Times 20.
Speaker C:That's what she's shipping to them.
Speaker C:He said, are you gonna be able to handle that?
Speaker C:I said, no.
Speaker C:Well, maybe he can get me into one region.
Speaker C:Walmart may start you off, give you time to build up.
Speaker C:So if they like your product, they put up with you.
Speaker D:That's fair.
Speaker C:You grow up.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:To what they want.
Speaker C:They start you in a like northeast region.
Speaker C:And maybe you can handle one tractor trailer load, which is like 21 gallons.
Speaker B:That's a lot of sauce.
Speaker C:That's a lot of sauce.
Speaker C:But that's like, that would be where you start.
Speaker C:So once you get these guys, you gotta supply them.
Speaker C:You gotta have the, you gotta have the production facility.
Speaker B:Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker C:You gotta, once you, if you took that next step, you better be ready.
Speaker C:So he was prepping me saying, you better think about this.
Speaker C:You may want to get another manufacturer to have two.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker C:If it happens.
Speaker C:I said, wow.
Speaker C:I didn't know that either.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:We're going to take a quick break.
Speaker B:We're going to be back with Richard West Haver, Dirty Dick from Dirty Dick's Hot Sauces right after this on the Nation.
Speaker B:Please stay with us.
Speaker E:Hey, everybody, it's Jeff here.
Speaker E:I want to tell you about something really cool.
Speaker E:Heritage steel cookware.
Speaker E:I just got mine.
Speaker E:I do a lot of cooking, and it's got five ply construction.
Speaker E:Stay cool handles.
Speaker E:It's titanium strengthened.
Speaker E:It's got all the great stuff.
Speaker E:Just go to HeritageSteel us and find out more.
Speaker E:You'll love it.
Speaker E:I guarantee it.
Speaker B:Welcome back to Barbecue Nation.
Speaker B:I'm JT along with Leanne Whippen, my co host, co pilot, Frank friend, and hall of famer.
Speaker B:And today we're talking with Richard Westover, Dirty dicks from Dirty Dick's Hot Sauces that we were talking about distribution and stuff.
Speaker B:Did you.
Speaker B:Have you had any supply chain issues over the last few years?
Speaker B:A lot of businesses have.
Speaker C:Well, during COVID the glass dried up.
Speaker C:They weren't bringing in any glass.
Speaker C:So I scoured the countries.
Speaker C:I called every glass company I knew, and I tried to find glass made in America.
Speaker C:And I.
Speaker C:I have found a couple, and so I'm still buying from those guys, but there was no glass coming in.
Speaker C:Nobody had glass, you know, local distributors.
Speaker B:What about the peppers and stuff?
Speaker B:The.
Speaker B:The produce, so to speak.
Speaker C:I could get peppers, you can't.
Speaker C:I always use red habaneros, so I specify that.
Speaker C:But it.
Speaker C:During COVID they wouldn't.
Speaker C:You couldn't get reds.
Speaker C:They'd say, well, you can have a box and mixed.
Speaker C:So it'd be coming from Mexico and you could get them out of Mexico.
Speaker C:Most of my stuff is Dominican Republic, so that's the normal supply chain.
Speaker C:But they dried up.
Speaker C:They weren't shipping.
Speaker B:How long did it take them to get back on their feet?
Speaker C:Oh, it was touch and go for a year and a half.
Speaker C:You'd get some, then it stopped.
Speaker C:You get some.
Speaker C:I kept scouring people, you know, you keep calling.
Speaker C:And there were people that grew them, but they wouldn't sell them to me.
Speaker B:Really.
Speaker C:Because I want the huts new.
Speaker C:The New York hot sauce show.
Speaker C:I won the world championship twice, and I won first place every year.
Speaker C:So they just.
Speaker C:Just like in barbecue, they don't like the guy who wins all the time.
Speaker C:So there was a guy that made Nash, and he wouldn't.
Speaker C:He wouldn't tell me anything.
Speaker D:Wow.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:He grew enough, but he wouldn't do it.
Speaker C:So he.
Speaker C:I couldn't get it from the local people.
Speaker B:Were those mostly like from the west coast and.
Speaker C:And glass guys from the.
Speaker C:From the west coast had glass.
Speaker C:But shipping to ship two pallets of glass on the west coast might be over A thousand dollars.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:And it was cost prohibitive after that.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:I don't.
Speaker B:I'm not sure that people.
Speaker B:The consumer thinks about that.
Speaker B:When they go to the store, they.
Speaker B:I have no idea what your products cost at a retail level, but if they.
Speaker B:Let's say they're $7 a bo and all of a sudden they're 8.50 a bottle, all they think is that you've jacked up the prices.
Speaker B:And it's not really you're doing.
Speaker B:It's the fact that you were put in a bind with supply chain issues and stuff, and somebody has to pick that up.
Speaker C:Like the guys who buy, say, the guys who buy several pallets from.
Speaker C:And I say, oh, I gotta go up 8 cents.
Speaker C:They fight me tooth and nail.
Speaker C:They won't even give me the 8 cents.
Speaker C:They don't want to do it.
Speaker C:That's really tough.
Speaker C:Once you set the price, they don't ever want to hear it, that you're going up.
Speaker B:Do you have to pay the shipping on that, too?
Speaker B:The freight?
Speaker C:They pay their own freight.
Speaker C:It's free on board Bellows Falls, Vermont, which is where I make it.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker C:So I tell them that.
Speaker C:So they have to arrange shipping, or I'll arrange it for them and ship it to wherever they are.
Speaker C:But they pay.
Speaker C:I don't pay shipping.
Speaker B:You ever have people ask you, how did somebody from the Northeast get in the hot sauce business?
Speaker B:You don't think of Vermont and hot sauce, for example?
Speaker C:No.
Speaker C:No way.
Speaker C:Well, I live in Boston, but I manufacture in Vermont because they have the.
Speaker C:They have a lot less rules.
Speaker C:Food rules.
Speaker C:Like, Massachusetts is horrible.
Speaker C:So I.
Speaker C:It's cheaper for me to manufacture up there.
Speaker C:So I do.
Speaker C:And no, people don't know.
Speaker C:People don't.
Speaker C:They don't understand.
Speaker C:Yeah, like mango puree.
Speaker C:So six cans used to be like 12 bucks.
Speaker C:It's now 22 at Restaurant Depot.
Speaker C:So that's, you know, prices just keep going.
Speaker C:And the guys who buy a lot don't want to hear it.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker C:They won't pay you.
Speaker C:They said, no, you don't want to do it.
Speaker C:They won't.
Speaker C:They, like, hold you.
Speaker C:Hold you to it.
Speaker C:So you have to kind of eat a lot of stuff.
Speaker B:Is it.
Speaker B:Is it important, Dick, to do, like you said, the.
Speaker B:The New York hot sauce show.
Speaker B:And I know that we have a hot sauce show.
Speaker B:I live in, just south of Portland, Oregon.
Speaker B:There's a show here.
Speaker B:There's a big show in New Mexico.
Speaker B:Do you.
Speaker B:Do you hit all those shows?
Speaker C:No, I.
Speaker C:We used to go to A lot more shows.
Speaker C:I've been to the one in.
Speaker C:I've been to Texas, and the New York show is closest to us, and that was the big one in the beginning.
Speaker C:That was like, the big one.
Speaker C:So we've been there, like, probably 12 years.
Speaker C:I.
Speaker C:I had a boo.
Speaker C:I'm not going this year.
Speaker C:In two weeks is the show in New York, and.
Speaker C:But I don't do too many anymore.
Speaker C:By the time you.
Speaker C:I take four people, the booth, all the sauce, pay for the rooms, pay for the gas, pay for the entry fee, and even, you know, it's like 3,000 bucks.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:Generally, you don't sell.
Speaker C:You don't come close to them.
Speaker B:How do you.
Speaker B:How do you sample it?
Speaker C:They allow you to use little spoons, like tiny spoons.
Speaker C:We.
Speaker C:We put it on chips.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker C:People grab a chip, and then we have a squeeze bottle and put a drop on it, and that's how they eat it.
Speaker C:The chips are.
Speaker C:The chips work better than I.
Speaker B:Yeah, I was wondering about that, because I've done some food shows.
Speaker B:I know Leanne's done a ton of them.
Speaker B:And each.
Speaker B:Each state has their own regulations about what you can do.
Speaker B:And if you have to have a food handler's card or, you know, whatever it is, they're all different.
Speaker C:To me, every place, every show is different.
Speaker C:And generally, if you use a wooden spoon, you're safe everywhere.
Speaker C:It's where you start putting it on food.
Speaker C:Yeah, putting it on corn chips.
Speaker C:We used to put it on corn chips because they were salty.
Speaker C:People liked it.
Speaker C:So that's.
Speaker C:If they let us, we do that.
Speaker C:But pretty much now it's wooden spoons, a plastic spoon.
Speaker B:Yeah, you would think, rationally thinking.
Speaker B:And that's.
Speaker B:But you would think that there would be kind of a standardized practice in food shows across the country.
Speaker B:Somebody would get together and say, we can do this and we can do this, but you can't do this.
Speaker B:And so you always knew what to expect when you went to a food show, but they don't ever do that.
Speaker C:So different states, different health departments is the.
Speaker C:It depends on the health department guy.
Speaker B:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker B:We're going to take another break.
Speaker B:We're going to be back with Dirty Dick from Dirty Dick's Hot Sauce right after this.
Speaker B:Stay with us.
Speaker E:Hey, everybody, it's JT And I have eaten.
Speaker E:If you've ever looked at me, you know that.
Speaker E:But I have eaten seafood all over the world, and I can tell you there's no place better than here in Oregon and our Dungeness crab.
Speaker E:If you Want to learn more about Oregon Dungeness crab?
Speaker E:Just go to oregondungeness.org and find out how to cook it, how to catch it, where to buy it, and the sustainability of what they're doing there in the Oregon Crab Commission.
Speaker E:Check it out.
Speaker B:Welcome back to the Nation.
Speaker B:That's Barbecue Nation again.
Speaker B:We'd like to thank the folks at Painterdale's Natural Beef and the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission.
Speaker B:I have to tell Leanne this.
Speaker B:It'll upset her a little bit, but I'll tell her anyway.
Speaker B:Oh, Friday were filming an interview close up at the golf course, and I get to feed them crab cocktails again.
Speaker D:Oh, I'm jealous.
Speaker D:Best crab in the world.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Have you ever had Dungeness crab, Dick, from the West Coast?
Speaker C:I have.
Speaker C:I've had it.
Speaker C:I love it.
Speaker C:Once in a while.
Speaker C:I sell it locally.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's great stuff.
Speaker B:It's great stuff, and we're fortunate to get our hands on it when we need it.
Speaker B:And I.
Speaker B:I've rarely found a person that would say, oh, no, I don't like that.
Speaker B:I'm not sure if I've ever found a person that says, no, I don't like that.
Speaker C:But Restaurant Depot, if you buy a, you know, 28 ounces of crab, you can pay up to 50 bucks for it.
Speaker C:If you get.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:It's like when.
Speaker B:What would you tell people, Dick, that have.
Speaker B:I don't want to call them delusions of.
Speaker B:Delusions of grandeur, but they're.
Speaker B:They're working on sauces.
Speaker B:I have a friend of mine, she lives in Virginia.
Speaker B:Her and her husband made not a hot sauce, but more of a glaze kind of a barbecue sauce.
Speaker B:It was excellent stuff, but they kind of got their butt handed to them when they were trying to go through the process that you explained earlier.
Speaker B:They had to have a commercial kitchen make it.
Speaker B:This is when they were trying to get into the retail business.
Speaker B:They really couldn't do it at home, you know, and then they had to try to find a distributor, and then the labels and it's a.
Speaker B:It's a big, long process.
Speaker B:And I'm always curious about that.
Speaker B:Somebody like you who's had success with your sauces, what would you advise them to do?
Speaker C:Well, the first thing I do after they have a recipe, everyone's got one, right.
Speaker C:Is they have to learn the food rules, the federal food rules.
Speaker C:When you're making a sauce, you have to learn about ph.
Speaker C:It's like, my sauces have a low enough ph that they don't need to be refrigerated.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:And they're more shelf stable.
Speaker C:And I tell people to learn all those rules because you're not going to be able to make your sauce unless you know about it.
Speaker C:You know, you don't want to.
Speaker C:If you can get away with it not being refrigerated, that's a big deal.
Speaker C:But you got to understand how to do production, food production.
Speaker C:And so there's a lot, you know, they have rules around here in New England.
Speaker C:Cornell runs it, runs it for the federal government.
Speaker C:You have to deal with Cornell.
Speaker B:Are they reasonable?
Speaker C:Yeah, they're reasonable.
Speaker C:When they upset, they'll tell you what to do.
Speaker C:The PH that's involved, people don't even think about the PH of their sauce.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:Whether it needs to be refrigerated.
Speaker C:If they send it to Cornell, they tell them.
Speaker C:They tell you, boy, this has to be boiled 185 degrees for 32 minutes.
Speaker C:And they explain to people the production scheduled for their product.
Speaker C:Because.
Speaker D:Do they charge you for that?
Speaker C:No, they don't charge.
Speaker D:That's amazing.
Speaker C:They work with the feds.
Speaker C:Somehow they feel like the fed, the wing of the federal food regulators.
Speaker C:And I think each region has their own company.
Speaker C:And I know out here, out here.
Speaker B:Out here, it's Oregon State because they've got a big, huge food ag department, food sciences stuff, and they do the.
Speaker B:The ph stuff.
Speaker B:And they also put on classes for people.
Speaker C:No, you can learn it.
Speaker C:Yeah, because I started in a.
Speaker C:In a starter kitchen, and they have kitchens that'll teach you how to make your sauce.
Speaker C:And it's like community.
Speaker C:Community kitchens.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So if you find a community kitchen, there'll be someone there that'll help you if you want to put in the work.
Speaker B:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker B:What's your favorite sauce out of the four you've got on the market?
Speaker C:I like the red.
Speaker C:That was my first one.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Actually, I like them all.
Speaker C:I like all the children.
Speaker C:So I hate.
Speaker D:Can't pick your favorite.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:Red, like, is.
Speaker C:Plus it sells like five, eight times more than the others, you know, so you gotta like that part.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B:Leanne.
Speaker B:Don't you like the Caribbean one, Leanne?
Speaker D:Yes.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:It's like each one I've been to Barbados and I ate their sauce and I said, well, I'm going to make a barbado sauce, and that's the Caribbean one.
Speaker C:I got that from Barbados.
Speaker C:And then my Peachy green, I said, I think I'm gonna write a recipe for spicy relish to put it on your Hot dogs.
Speaker C:And that's.
Speaker C:That's how I got peachy green.
Speaker C:And then the chipotle was.
Speaker C:I said, I'm gonna make a Mexican sauce.
Speaker C:So that's kind of how I look at each one, you know?
Speaker C:So I kind of.
Speaker C:I really like each one of them because I work on them so long.
Speaker C:Once I find that it's.
Speaker C:This is it.
Speaker B:You think that.
Speaker B:You think that people.
Speaker B:When they.
Speaker B:When they think of hot sauces.
Speaker B:Dick.
Speaker B:They think it's Tabasco.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:That's.
Speaker C:Everyone knows the best.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Or if you're out here in the west and we've got a lot of Hispanic influence out here, what is it, the pico.
Speaker B:I'm not saying it right, but they've got two or three that are out here that if you go to a Mexican restaurant, they're always on the table, or if you ask them for a hot sauce, that's what they will bring you.
Speaker B:But do you think people are hesitant sometimes to expand their taste palettes and their taste buds by looking at it?
Speaker C:People are afraid of the heat.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:They go, oh, my God, how hot is this?
Speaker C:This is always the first question.
Speaker C:And that's why I never made my stuff hotter than medium, because I wanted them to try it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:A lot of people can't handle the heat, and I think that's got a lot to do with it.
Speaker B:Well, I know.
Speaker C:I know.
Speaker C:Is Frank's Red Hot and Tabasco, and that's west.
Speaker C:It's called Topatio, I think.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker C:And that's all they know is what.
Speaker C:Because that's what's on every tape.
Speaker C:Like, the little guys.
Speaker C:We never get our sauce on restaurant tables.
Speaker C:Never get in a chain.
Speaker C:You know what I mean?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker D:You'd have to give it away, probably.
Speaker C:And how would you get it on in Restaurant Depot?
Speaker C:Because that's where everyone buys.
Speaker C:So I pitched Restaurant Depot, and they go, what did you say that name was?
Speaker C:And I tell the lady, and she goes, no, no, thanks.
Speaker C:So I know that I get.
Speaker C:You didn't even get by the.
Speaker C:If it was Freddy's Hot Sauce, you might have tried it, you know, but she didn't even want to try it.
Speaker C:Said, no.
Speaker B:What if you made it?
Speaker D:Hair loss.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:What.
Speaker B:What if you made a one that said clean dicks or something?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:I actually changed the name once, and I thought a clean dick, you know, kind of a goof.
Speaker C:But it's a lot of effort just to have a goof.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Go through the whole rigamarole to change it.
Speaker C:No.
Speaker B:Oh, I Love it.
Speaker B:I love it.
Speaker B:We're talking with him, Richard Westhaver, commonly known in food circles as Dirty Dicks from Dirty Dick's Hot Sauces.
Speaker B:And you can find them at Amazon.
Speaker B:You can find them around the country.
Speaker B:Are they more prevalent on the east coast than they are out my way?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Because I have a distributor in Vermont.
Speaker C:I have two in Vermont.
Speaker C:And they like really local stuff.
Speaker C:So all the tourist traps have my sauce.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Because made in Vermont, that's a big deal.
Speaker D:It is.
Speaker C:I don't know about the rest of the country because I sell it to people, but I don't know where it goes.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:Like people say, hey, I was in Florida and I.
Speaker C:And Key West.
Speaker C:I was in this store.
Speaker C:I had your stuff in it.
Speaker C:And so I don't even know where it comes from.
Speaker C:We're going a lot of the time because they don't tell you.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:So I don't even know.
Speaker C:It's all over, though.
Speaker C:It's all over.
Speaker B:That.
Speaker B:That.
Speaker B:When I was doing the rubs and stuff a long time ago, that happened to me.
Speaker B:My wife and I were traveling and we stopped in this little town for the night and we.
Speaker B:Next day we got up, went, had breakfast, and we were kind of looking around.
Speaker B:We walked into this little, like you said, a tourist trap store and walked and.
Speaker B:And they had some displays.
Speaker B:And on the.
Speaker B:On one of the displays there was my rubs.
Speaker B:And I don't know how in the hell they got there.
Speaker B:You know, in southeast Idaho.
Speaker B:I never sold them to anybody in southeast Idaho, so I have no idea.
Speaker C:How it gets around.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:So I can't tell people.
Speaker C:They say, well, I'm in Chicago.
Speaker C:Who.
Speaker C:Where can I get your sauce?
Speaker C:I'm saying you have to get it on Amazon or on my website because I don't know, you know, so that's.
Speaker B:Has the business been good to you, Dick?
Speaker C:Yeah, overall, it's pretty good.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B:I think a lot of people get disheartened.
Speaker B:They may have a great product.
Speaker B:Not taking anything away from their product.
Speaker B:It may be fantastic.
Speaker B:But they're not used to the slog, the long slog, if you will, it takes to really get your products on the shelves.
Speaker B:There's a lot more competition out there these days than there was 10 years ago.
Speaker C:So that's when you have to start with the shows.
Speaker C:When you start.
Speaker C:Start out, you have to go to those shows because there's no other way to get your stuff up.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:So that's what people have to do.
Speaker C:Like, we did a lot more shows than we do now.
Speaker C:And I don't know how else you're going to get it out.
Speaker C:There's no other way to taste it.
Speaker C:Like, we.
Speaker C:When we.
Speaker C:We used to sell the Whole Foods, and they would make you come in and sample it.
Speaker C:So they'd make you do it?
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker D:You had to sample, actually, in the stores.
Speaker C:They'd say, well, they got the guy from Hingham.
Speaker C:They got my store off the street.
Speaker C:They'd say, look, I want you in here every six months.
Speaker C:And you'd have to go bring your table and your little setup, and you'd have to stay there about four hours.
Speaker D:Wow.
Speaker C:If.
Speaker C:If you wanted to keep your stuff in.
Speaker C:In the store.
Speaker C:Yeah, that's what they do.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:We're gonna take another break.
Speaker B:We're gonna come back and wrap up the show with Dick Westhaver from Dirty Dick's Hot Sauces right after this.
Speaker B:Stay with us.
Speaker E:Hey, everybody, it's jt.
Speaker E:You know, I talk about Painted Hills all the time, and we always say beef the way nature intended.
Speaker E:But it's more than that because each bite of Painted Hills will make your taste buds explode.
Speaker E:Put a big, bright smile on your face, and whoever's at your dinner table will have a big, bright smile on their face.
Speaker E:And you can thank me for that later.
Speaker E:Just go to paintedhillsbeef.com and find out more.
Speaker B:You won't regret it.
Speaker E:Hey, everybody, J.T.
Speaker B:Here.
Speaker E:I want to tell you about the Hammerstahl knives.
Speaker E:Hammer Stahl combines German steel with beautiful and functioning designs.
Speaker E:They're part of the Heritage Steel group, which also does their pots and pans.
Speaker E:So go to heritagesteel us.
Speaker E:Check out the Hammer Stahl knives.
Speaker E:If you're really into cooking, I think you're really going to like them.
Speaker B:Welcome back to Barbecue Nation.
Speaker B:I'm JT along with Leanne Whippin, and today we're talking with formerly known as Richard Westhaver, now known as Dirty Dick from Dirty Dick's Hot Sauces.
Speaker B:Give us your website real quick, too, Dick, so people can hear it.
Speaker C:Www.dirtydickshotsauce.com There you go.
Speaker B:And they can find it on Amazon?
Speaker C:Yes, it's on Amazon.
Speaker B:Is there any other retail outlets on online that they can find it?
Speaker C:You know, you can get it.
Speaker C:People sell it to Walmart.
Speaker C:They sell it to ebay.
Speaker C:You can get it on ebay, Walmart.
Speaker C:I don't even know who gives it to them, but it's on there.
Speaker C:Well, because people ask permission to be on Amazon, right?
Speaker C:Because you can kind of control Amazon.
Speaker C:For a while, they would, they took my.
Speaker C:Another thing, the piracy.
Speaker C:They took the barcode off Dirty Dick's hot Sauce, and they were selling T shirts to Amazon with my.
Speaker D:Oh, wow, I've never heard of that.
Speaker C:I got.
Speaker C:Yeah, I didn't know till I wanted to.
Speaker C:They have a thing called transparency, where you wouldn't let anyone to sell your sauce.
Speaker C:You could, like, lock everyone out.
Speaker C:And I found out about all Those guys, like 20 people selling my stuff that I didn't even know about, because you can't tell who it is.
Speaker C:Like, if you go on, it'll say JB Industries.
Speaker C:There's no way to know who those guys are because everyone has a different name.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:So you have to be, you know, you really have to.
Speaker C:If it matters, you know, if you care and just.
Speaker C:But that's, There's a lot of piracy, too.
Speaker C:You have to be careful.
Speaker B:It's kind of like the name of this show, Barbecue Nation, and I own the trademark to it, but all the time I turn around and find something that somebody that's got a different podcast, a different show, maybe they're making rubs, whatever, and they don't bother to check, or if they do, they don't care.
Speaker B:And so we have to write them a cease and desist letter.
Speaker B:You know, haven't had to go legally beat up anybody yet, but it's a pain in the butt to do that.
Speaker C:I trade backed mine, and then the lawyer does this, the search.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:And then they get back to you and go, oh, there's this guy here and that one there.
Speaker C:But he's not, he's not trademarked.
Speaker C:So I have a trademark now, but it didn't matter for Amazon.
Speaker C:There were a lot of people using my name, my numbers.
Speaker B:It's tough out there.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:How do you think that your time in, when you had a barbecue team, how did that in the long run affect what you created in the sauces?
Speaker C:Well, I was cooking all the time and writing recipes because I always wanted to win the barbecue contest.
Speaker C:And I, I, it was kind of a separate deal because I never put hot sauce on my barbecue.
Speaker C:So that was like a separate thing.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:That I.
Speaker C:The hot sauce never got crossed over to barbecue.
Speaker C:But you can't submit hot food to the judges.
Speaker D:No, no.
Speaker B:They'd have a.
Speaker C:You know, I never had that in mind when I was writing recipes.
Speaker B:Well, that makes sense.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know, and the profiles have changed.
Speaker B:I don't compete.
Speaker B:Leanne certainly knows more about this than I do, but seems to me that from the events that I've gone to, the profiles have changed even over the last five, eight years as to what's winning, if you will.
Speaker C:It seems like the sweeter people kept up in the sweet taste.
Speaker C:And that seems to be what's going.
Speaker C:When I judge.
Speaker C:Seems to be a lot of people using the same sauce.
Speaker C:Like, they don't.
Speaker C:You make their own stuff.
Speaker C:They use commercial stuff.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:I don't want to say their name.
Speaker B:Well, you can say their names out.
Speaker C:And, you know, with hot sauces, it's different.
Speaker C:You know, there's a lot of crappy hot sauces.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah, Yeah.
Speaker C:A lot of horrible ones.
Speaker C:So those guys, they drop by the wayside, you know, there's nobody's.
Speaker C:Once you try it, if it's not any good, then I.
Speaker C:Yeah, they're not.
Speaker D:Going to buy it again.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:You can get them once, but you'll never get repeats.
Speaker B:I can't tell you how many samples people have sent me over the years since I started this show that the lid came off, I tasted it and it went away.
Speaker B:You know, I.
Speaker B:It just wasn't any good.
Speaker B:I didn't.
Speaker B:And I try to be very nice to people about stuff.
Speaker B:You know, I don't want to be harsh with them if I can avoid it, but there's an awful lot of them that never made it past that first little taste.
Speaker C:You know, a lot of people don't know enough about food that they don't know what's good.
Speaker C:Yeah, they, you know, they haven't done enough with food.
Speaker C:They don't understand what's a good sauce, and they don't, you know, they don't understand it or they try to copy someone.
Speaker C:They just don't have the skill.
Speaker B:Did you work in the restaurants with your family when you were younger?
Speaker C:I grew up behind the counter.
Speaker C:Our restaurant, we had two, and I never really cooked.
Speaker C:I was too young to cook in the restaurants.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:But I was always in.
Speaker C:In them.
Speaker C:And then we just had a restaurant family.
Speaker C:Everyone cooked.
Speaker C:My brother went to Cornell.
Speaker C:He.
Speaker C:He opened up his own place and I used to hang out there.
Speaker C:But, no, I never really.
Speaker C:I cooked in a few, but not.
Speaker B:Were they in the Boston area?
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah, they were in Boston.
Speaker C:My brother had one in Hingham.
Speaker C:That's where his place was.
Speaker B:That's a tough business, too, as Leanne can attest to, and anybody that.
Speaker B:And I can attest to.
Speaker B:You've been in the restaurant business?
Speaker C:They were never home.
Speaker B:That's all.
Speaker C:I.
Speaker C:Mm.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:My mother worked the night shift.
Speaker C:My father Worked the day shift.
Speaker C:So 5am to 5, let's say 5 to 5.
Speaker C:And then she'd go in.
Speaker C:They were open till they were there across the street from a theater.
Speaker C:They were open till two in the morning, so she wouldn't make it home before a.m.
Speaker C:wow.
Speaker C:That was their life.
Speaker C:So I knew I'm never going to be in a restaurant because I don't want to live that way.
Speaker C:But I got the, you know, I love to cook.
Speaker C:And we all cooked.
Speaker C:And so I took it out on barbecue contests and making hot sauce.
Speaker C:So that's where it kind of affected me.
Speaker C:I knew what wasn't the recipe.
Speaker C:I wasn't going to have one.
Speaker B:If you could do one thing different in the process of doing your hot sauces, what would it be?
Speaker B:If anything.
Speaker C:I'd be.
Speaker C:Try to be better at marketing.
Speaker C:You have to learn a lot about marketing because you waste a lot of time flubbing around trying to get your sauce out.
Speaker C:You don't.
Speaker C:You don't get anywhere.
Speaker C:Like, you call a local stop and shop.
Speaker C:Hi, I'd like to send you my sauce.
Speaker C:You know, nothing ever happens.
Speaker C:You could.
Speaker C:And there's got to be a better way.
Speaker B:Did they.
Speaker B:I'm curious about this, too, because we're.
Speaker B:We're just about done with this part of the show, Dick.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker C:All right.
Speaker B:When I was doing the rubs, I had a couple.
Speaker B:The larger stores say, okay, here's what we want you to do.
Speaker B:We want you to send us four cases of each.
Speaker B:I had four like you have.
Speaker B:I had four.
Speaker B:They.
Speaker B:Four cases of each.
Speaker B:But we want you to send them to these 10 stores and.
Speaker B:And then we want you to pay back.
Speaker B:Then it was $5,000 a quarter for their in ad inserts.
Speaker B:And the price just kept going up before you ever.
Speaker B:You never sold one bottle yet before all this.
Speaker B:And then they wanted you to come in and do the store demos.
Speaker B:And so I just kind of like, said, no, I can't do that.
Speaker B:It was.
Speaker B:It was pretty crazy.
Speaker C:Well, that's how they keep the little guy out of there.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:You know, that's how they qualify you.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Got the money to do it.
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker D:So, on a totally separate note, the Jack Daniels contest is coming up soon.
Speaker D:Did you know Jeff, that dirty dick hands out the magic hickory nets with Artie?
Speaker D:But last year was last year.
Speaker C:Yeah, no more.
Speaker D:Yep.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker B:I talked to Artie the other day, and he's got a hickory nut for you, Leanne.
Speaker D:He already sent it to me.
Speaker B:Did he?
Speaker E:Okay.
Speaker D:Yes.
Speaker D:Yeah, he's on it.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker B:He's got that.
Speaker B:Well, anyway, we need to get out of.
Speaker B:Out of here for the radio part of this.
Speaker B:No, wait.
Speaker B:No, you're not.
Speaker D:You're not going anywhere yet.
Speaker D:You're not going any more minutes.
Speaker B:Yeah, but.
Speaker B:Richard Westhaver from Dirty Dick's Hot Sauce.
Speaker B:Thank you, man.
Speaker B:I appreciate it.
Speaker B:It's great to talk to you.
Speaker C:Thank you for asking me to be on your show.
Speaker B:No problem.
Speaker B:We will be back next week with another edition of Barbecue Nation.
Speaker B:Until then, go out, try some jigs hot sauce.
Speaker B:Go online and find it at Dirty Dick Sauce.
Speaker D:Seriously, my favorite hot sauce.
Speaker D:And I'm not just saying that.
Speaker D:And if people buy it and say something different, I would.
Speaker D:I would be totally surprised.
Speaker D:No, definitely.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker B:I agree.
Speaker B:I agree.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker B:Thanks for being with us.
Speaker B:Remember our motto.
Speaker B:Turn it, don't burn it.
Speaker B:Take care, everybody.
Speaker A:Barbecue Nation is produced by jtsd, LLC Productions in association with Salem Media Group.
Speaker A:All rights reserved.
