Meet Tajia and Aaron Junior | Owners of Hot Sauce and Pepper

We had the good fortune of connecting with Tajia and Aaron Junior and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Tajia and Aaron, putting aside the decision to work for yourself, what other decisions were critical to your success?
Learning to move through fear has been one of the most valuable lessons that we’ve learned on our journey of entrepreneurship. In life and in business things will be new to you and new things are always scary. Many days will be filled with list and list of things to do, and the anxiety will pile up! In business, in order to be successful, we’ve learned to move through fear, we’ve learned to move in spite of anxiety. There are days that we may not feel as confident, we’ve had to learn to be our own motivators and say no to those thoughts, so that we can overcome those feelings and get to our goal. It’s important to keep in mind that there just feelings and that our mission is bigger. This is decision to move regardless of fear, has been the difference between keep going and giving up for us!

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Hot Sauce and Pepper, owned by Tajia and Aaron is the Home of the Caulifyah. We created an amazing, deep-fried cauliflower that is like no other on the market. Our food truck serves the deep fried Caulifyah with other vegan soul-food like sides, such as mac and cheese, made with a homemade sauce, Fried Rice, Obaby Fries which are fries seasoned in old bay! Hot Sauce and Pepper serves food with flavors from the East Coast such as using mambo sauce, native to Washington DC and Old Bay seasonings. Hot Sauce and Pepper is unique because our mission is rooted in the community. Our mission is to feed people food that is good for them just as much good to them. We use sustainable products and local and non-gmo ingredients We are dedicated to making sure our ingredients reflect our values that people should have access to healthy foods made with flavor! Hot Sauce and Pepper is driven by the desire to show people that they can eat foods they like while still caring for the planet and their own health. We care about people’s lives, and we know that good food can be radically changing.

We have been building HSP for 2 years. It began as meal prep company that grew out of us helping a family friend who was diagnosed with cancer and became too weak to cook for herself. We offered to step in and help. By cooking for her weekly, others began to ask about meal options and long story short that turned into a meal prep company. We were still very amateur and with neither of us having backgrounds in food, we decided we needed to learn more. We enrolled in the Prepped ASU program, which was an incubator program for small food businesses. This was extremely helpful and mainly gave us the confidence and knowledge on how to get permitted, it also provided a stipend at the end which allowed us to use the money for our food permits. Once we became permitted, we started going to events we found out about, and this was the begging of the HSP journey! It was so many obstacles and so many things to learn. At our first event and many after taht until we could afford a commercial f, we used a small house fryer. We did what we could and used what we had. It wasn’t too long before the Caulifyah began to really take off and we had lines everywhere we went. Eventually we were able to get a commercial fryer and from there more and more needed equipment. Over the last two years later, we’ve gone through a million obstacles and a million success too but during this time, we built our business by collaborating with the communities we work in, we co-created spaces for other business owners to work with us and we connected with community to give back as much as possible. We have learned many lessons but the most valuable of the lessons is when your business is about community rather than profit, it doesn’t matter what you go through the community will be there to help you get through it!

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
morning -Hike breakfast-Brunch N Sip
hang-out at The Churchill
lunch at Freak bros
if it is a wed well go to Poetic Soul
dinner-Hot Sauce and Pepper

Bars: Sleepywhale, Sugar Bar, Tipsy cactus

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Our success has been co-created by the entire community that eats with us and supports our local business. Local First, Mesa Business Builders Program and The Churchill has been major supporters of HSP by providing financial support and other resources to grow!

Website: www.hotsauceandpepper.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/hotsaucenpepper

Facebook: www.facebook.com/hspflava