Hot Sauce For The Homeless

I have been creating my own sauces and rubs for a few years now. We use them in BBQ competitions and I have given them away to several friends, coworkers and fellow chiliheads. Thanks to popular demand, I decided to test the market with some sales and see what the public thinks. I created a name and a website for my creations: The Pepper Mart The reviews have been great so I began the process of making The Pepper Mart a true company but all the research made me dizzy. In the state of Tennessee, it is a very deep, expensive and time-consuming process to get a food manufacturing company up and running. I feel as if I have great products and I hold the recipes close to my heart. Pondering the idea for many months, I got a new calling that was more valuable of my time than spending it trying to make a profit of my own.

My brother and I are BBQ nerds. We love to cook it a lot more than eating it. You won't find either of us at a local BBQ restaurant very often and if we are, it's mostly experimental only or entertaining people from out of town. Since we love to cook it but not consume it, what do we do with all this meat? We thought of ideas about donating it to homeless shelters or St. Jude houses but a lot of these places cannot accept home-cooked foods. I branched out even more and began the process of creating a non-profit organization that cooks for local charities. This past Thanksgiving, we did our first cook, smoking 200 lbs of turkeys for a local organization called "Eat Memphis". Along with sides that we provided, we fed over 160 people in need and it was some good grub! Lots of people got great meals that day and I instantly fell in love with this concept.

Eat Memphis then asked me again for help with feeding people for Christmas on 12/23. The non-profit is still under the registration process so instead of asking for donations or funding the cook myself, I've decided to sell smoked hams for $25 on my Pepper Mart website, calling it Hams For The Homeless All sales made will go directly to a fund that will purchase the same hams which I will smoke for the cook on the 23rd. It then dawned on me that I should dedicate my Pepper Mart sales directly to this fund as well. I changed my vision and modified the website to reflect it. Every sale is a donation to feeding someone in need. I make nothing myself so all the time spent making the great products is from my heart to help those who need it the most. To me, the best thing in the world is to give and make people happy. What better way to warm someone's heart than warming the mouth of a chilihead?!

So place an order for some sauces, rubs, seeds and/or a ham. Someone out there needs your support and this is one tasty way of doing so!! See the links below for more information.

http://www.thepeppermart.com
http://www.hamsforthehomeless.com