Sweet Heat Comes of Age

Sweet Heat Comes of Age By Becki Bell

It's hot, it's spicy, and you can put it on ice cream.

If you recoiled in horror after reading that sentence, you're not atypical. To many hot foods connoisseurs (even the most practiced), spicy and sweet are simply not compatible. Spicy is a main-course attribute, sweet is for dessert.

So ingrained in the American psyche is this notion that only a few manufacturers have dared dip their toes into the uninviting waters of marketing a sweet heat product to a skeptical audience. Those that do find that having a knack for persuasion can be the difference between sinking and swimming.

Marilyn Lysohir of Cowgirl Chocolates recalls what it was like for her brother when he tried to sell a local chocolate shop on the idea of a spicy candy. "They just laughed at him," she says. "They just thought he was an idiot. But when he told me I thought, 'that's a good idea.'"

Despite that less-than-positive initial reaction to the idea, Lysohir was undaunted. She experimented with different recipes, chose high-quality chocolate, and had sophisticated packaging designed. She took Cowgirl Chocolates to fancy food shows and passed out free samples. Even then it wasn't easy. Lysohir remembers how people first reacted to her unusual product, particularly one passer-by at a food show in San Francisco. "She saw our packaging and realized that we added the heat to the chocolate, and she said 'I don't think so.'" The passer-by, as it turned out, was a professional chef, and Lysohir was determined to unsettle her preconceptions. "I said, 'Shame on you. You're a chef and your palette is very sophisticated. At least try it.' And she ate it and she said, 'I'm wrong.'"

Getting people past that first hurdle of skepticism is the primary challenge faced by many sweet heat manufacturers. Todd Guiton, founder of Peppered Palette, Inc., has been manufacturing sweet heat products since 1996. "Today, six years later, we're still trying to get people to understand that it's not that strange a concept," he says.

Like Lysohir and many other sweet heat manufacturers, Guiton uses freebies to persuade reluctant consumers to try Toad Sweat, the spicy dessert topping manufactured by Peppered Palette. "There's this look of bewilderment and puzzlement, this 'no way' look," he says. "And then they taste it and you see the synapses connect, and you watch as this smile erupts on their face."

Toad Sweat Products

Most sweet heat manufacturers swear by this kind of marketing. "The primary challenge is that these are products which do not sell well unless people have a chance to try them," says Ann Cates, president of Chile Jammin' Stuff, Inc., a manufacturer of sweet pepper jellies. "Once they try them and learn how versatile the products are, they normally buy." That makes trade shows and fiery-food festivals one of the most successful marketing outlets for sweet heat manufacturers. Retail channels, however, are a bit tougher to crack.

"It was even kind of hard getting Cowgirl Chocolates into the industry," admits Lysohir. "It would sell out at the shows but we couldn't wholesale it easily."

The difficulty of marketing sweet heat products in retail outlets can probably be attributed to the absence of a persuasive salesperson. To compensate, sweet heat manufacturers have to be a bit more creative than manufacturers of less daring products. Guiton helps give shoppers a push by providing his retailers with squirt bottles for sampling. That way, customers can try Toad Sweat risk-free while they're still in the store.

Jillayne Kemp of Blind Betty's says that her first experiences with marketing a sweet heat sauce were, like many others, a little discouraging. "The first one I came out with was the Pineapple Pizzazz," she says. "People would see it was a fruit-based sauce and they wouldn't even go near it." Today, though, things are changing. Kemp has learned to use the local tourism industry as a marketing vehicle; she sells her products to local restaurants, which, in return, serve them to customers. As a result, Kemp's sauces--a habanero-citrus sauce called Blind in the Rind, and the habanero-pineapple Pineapple Pizzazz--are very popular locally.

Blind Betty's sweet-hot Products

Part of the reason is location. Blind Betty's is a Caribbean company, and its sweet heat sauces are easy to market to modern travelers, who are generally more sophisticated than their predecessors. Instead of seeking a vacation with all the comforts of home, today's travelers are much more interested in having a cultural experience. That's helped Blind Betty's products become a hit at local restaurants, where Caribbean vacationers will regularly choose sauces with a local flavor over generic Texas-style hot sauces.

Consumer reluctance, though, isn't the only hurdle sweet heat manufacturers have to clear. Because the sweet heat combination is the subject of so much skepticism, manufacturers are careful to make everything else about their products beyond criticism. That means high-quality ingredients and sophisticated packaging--and an expensive resulting product. "The first ingredient in all my jams is the fruit," says Cates. "There are no artificial flavorings or colors in any of my jams. This personal criteria makes the jams expensive to produce."

Lysohir has the same high standards, which adds to the challenge of marketing and selling her products. "We make Cowgirl Chocolates with quality ingredients and really good packaging," says Lysohir. This gives the chocolates a strong curb-appeal but makes them tough to market to small retailers and consumers who may not want to risk more than a couple of dollars on something as daring as a spicy candy.

Cowgirl Chocolates

The audience is out there, though--it may just be a matter of reaching them. "We were on The Food Channel on a program called 'Extreme Cuisine, '" says Lyoshir. "The response we got from that show was just overwhelming. There are vast numbers of people who love this, we just need to find them and they need to find us."

Once located, convinced, and converted, a loyal consumer can become a valuable marketing force. With the initial reluctance overcome, consumers will not only buy the product, they will try it out on other people, too. That can really give a boost to the retail market. "[Shop owners] are usually not as adventurous," says Lysohir. "If they have to invest money it's a little scary to them; but when you have customers that are pushing them to try it, sometimes that's all they need. It's the customers that have helped Cowgirl Chocolates the most. It's like an underground force that's helping it to move into the market. I have customers that call us directly to tell us that their local market is out of Cowgirl Chocolates."

Sweet heat manufacturers face non-marketing challenges, too. The primary one is also the most obvious--how to create a product that successfully combines a sweet flavor with a spicy kick.

"I use cayenne because it's more of a physical feeling rather than a taste," says Lysohir. "I use a high-end chocolate, and I don't want the pepper to interfere with the taste of the chocolate. I want the chocolate to still speak of chocolate."

Guiton had the same concern when he first began making sweet heat desserts. "I started experimenting with jalapeño jelly in key-lime cheesecakes, but it tasted vegetably," he says. Then he tried using habaneros. "The very first taste I got was lime and then five to eight seconds into the thing I felt like I'd been electrocuted." After that, habaneros became the staple heat source for Toad Sweat products.

Chile Jammin' Stuff brand

Cates also uses habaneros with many of her products, including her most popular Habanero Hula Jam (a pineapple-habanero combination). Chile Jammin' Stuff also manufacturers jalapeño-based jams, which make ideal compliments to more savory foods such as cheeses, meats and crackers.

Recipes and cooking ideas, especially those that come from consumers, run the creative gamut. Sweet heat manufacturers often ask customers to contribute recipe ideas, which they publish on their websites as yet another way of stirring up consumer interest.

Chip Hearn of Peppers, which manufactures a line of sweet heat sauces, says he gets recipe ideas from customers that extend far beyond what his sauces were originally intended for. "Our Georgia Peach Onion Sauce, which has a real smooth taste, was designed for red meats--but a lot of the recipes we get from customers are breakfast recipes."

Georgia Peach Onion Sauce

Even Guiton, who markets Toad Sweat as a dessert sauce, says the culinary creativity of his customers has no limits. "People put it on glazed ham, chicken, bagels, oatmeal, and other non-dessert foods," he says. Guiton's website (see below) has a small collection of recipes that range from simple fruit skewers and popcorn toppings to more labor intensive recipes like cheesecake and dessert tamales. Toad Sweat recipes can be found in other places, too--many of which are the humble homepages of loyal Toad Sweat fans.

So if the potential for sweet heat products exists in the marketplace, why is it so hard for consumers to make that first jump? "I think it's just the 1950s," says Guiton. "It's that American 'mashed potatoes, everything's in its place, we want everything very ordered, we don't want anything that challenges the norm' problem. It's getting past that concept of 'normal.'"

Ruffled aprons, roller-skating waitresses and other relics of the 50s may be retreating into the annals of black and white television, but some concepts of "normal" aren't so easily dispersed. Slowly, though, sweet heat is beginning to gain respect. "The fiery-food thing kicked off into the market as a macho thing," says Kemp. "At first it was about the rush and the buzz, and now the whole industry is settling down and it's not such a macho thing anymore."

That leaves the road open to consumers whose primary motivation is their sense of exploration. "Our customers have a certain personality type that's adventurous, and they're at least willing to try new things," says Hearn.

Cates, who first began making sweet jams at the request of a friend, echoes the sentiment. "My audience consists of people who enjoy adventures in food," she says. To encourage the growth of this audience, Cates tries to keep her product range as versatile as possible, with six different sweet-hot jellies ranging from mild to hot. That way, people who have a sense of adventure but a lower tolerance for heat can participate in the fun, too.

In that sense, sweet heat products may have greater potential than the skeptics have so far believed. "Their versatility places them in the middle of the fiery-foods craze," says Cates, which could help attract consumers who are looking not for the "rush," but for something different and exotic. "[Sweet heat products] show there is a spice in life beyond salsa," says Cates.

Hearn says that kind of open-mindedness is one of the reasons why sweet heat is finally catching on. "I think what's happened is that the vast majority of our population is willing to try different combinations now. They're more willing to experiment with ethnic foods, and because of that they're learning, 'wait a minute, I can do this with that.'"

Once convinced, it's the products themselves that keep consumers coming back for more. "It's 'mouth surfing,'" says Hearn. "The simple concept is that you get different tastes as the food goes from the front of your mouth to the back of your throat, and the beauty of sweet heat is you get all those tastes swirling around together. And of course with the hot flavors, you get the endorphins as well."

"It's infectiously fun," says Guiton, who first started making sweet heat foods to share with friends and coworkers. Today, Guiton's hobby has become a successful business with its own following of devoted fans.

And now that his fans have experienced the adventure of combining sweet with heat, they're willing to try almost anything. "I've been asked, 'Have you tried the stuff in beer?'" Guiton says. "And I say 'Dude, that's weird,' but do I have room to talk? I'm putting the stuff on ice cream!"

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Peppered Palette, Inc.

PO Box 3213

Cary, NC 27519

Phone: 919-468-7101

Toll Free: 866-810-9209

Fax: 919-462-8452

http://www.peppered.com

Email: sweat@peppered.com

Toad Sweat dessert sauces: