Yahoo Finance NC father and son once made hot sauce in their garage. Now they see $5M in revenue
In 2014, Elijah and Bret Morey decided to turn their hobby of making hot sauce into a small business operating out of their Gastonia garage.
Elijah Morey was a 16-year-old sophomore at Highland Tech High at the time. He’d bring his hot sauces to school, partly to get feedback for refining recipes and for the entertainment of challenging his classmates to try the sauces. They even started selling it on Amazon that first year.
For the next few years, it remained a fun side gig.
The business really took off after Elijah Morey graduated in 2020 from Anderson University in Anderson, South Carolina. During the height of the pandemic, the Moreys moved from the garage to a 2,500-square-foot warehouse in Ranlo, a 30-minute drive west of Charlotte, to meet demand.
Now, the Moreys’ hot sauce and barbecue sauce business, called Elijah’s Xtreme, operates out of a 12,000-square-foot warehouse. The business generated $4.8 million in revenue last year, mainly through online sales.
Bret Morey, the CEO, pushed his son to do what he could to grow the business during COVID.
As chief marketing officer, Elijah Morey focused on learning how to make social media content and advertisements, especially on TikTok. He attributes the business’ growth during the pandemic to the effort he put into learning about and making social media content.
Despite the business’ growth, it’s still just a small drop in the hot sauce market. One industry market report estimated the U.S. hot sauce business last year at $1.3 billion.
Elijah Morey believes Elijah’s Xtreme still has plenty of room to grow.
“’I’m not going to be satisfied when we hit $15 million (in revenue). I think we’ll be a $1 billion company,” he said. “We will be a food brand.”
An early love of hot sauce
Bret Morey always kept hot peppers in his garden when Elijah was young.
Wanting to impress his father, 6-year-old Elijah Morey asked him what he had to do to be the youngest person to eat the hottest pepper in the world. Bret handed his son a hot banana pepper and said, “Start here.”
The banana pepper sent the youngster running to the kitchen for water. But he cited this moment as the beginning of their shared love for hot sauce and hot peppers.
Throughout the years, the Moreys enjoyed trying different hot sauces and challenging each other to eat hot peppers. But they noticed most hot sauces were either hot or flavorful, rarely both.
So they started making their own hot sauce for fun in 2010, and began selling it on Amazon in 2014. Amazon gave Elijah’s Xtreme visibility it otherwise wouldn’t have had on its website alone.
“Anybody can make something hot,” Elijah Morey said. “It’s a different story to make it taste good and still be hot. That’s what we do, and that’s what our passion is based on.”
Experimenting with the process
Although the production process is much more complex now than when Elijah and Bret Morey began, it still starts in Bret’s kitchen, experimenting with ingredients until a new recipe is agreed upon.
Elijah and Bret Morey then send the recipe to a co-packer, a company approved by the Food and Drug Administration to manufacture and package food products for other companies, which scales the recipe up to produce the necessary amounts.
Workers in Asheville, Henderson and Costa Rica produce and bottle the sauce before sending it to Elijah’s Xtreme warehouse in Gastonia. Elijah’s Xtreme employees then pack orders for Amazon to deliver through its Charlotte facility just off Interstate 485.
The ingredients in Elijah’s Xtreme hot sauces are a key part of what sets them apart from competitors, Elijah Morey said.
Unlike many hot sauces, Elijah’s Xtreme doesn’t use extracts or chemicals to add heat to its sauces, Elijah Morey said. They rely completely on peppers from Costa Rica for heat.
More about Elijah’s Xtreme
Elijah’s Xtreme sells six types of hot sauces and two barbecue sauces. Its Xtreme Regret hot sauce recently was on the list for Amazon’s top-selling hot sauces.
The hot sauces also can be purchased at some grocery stores and retail locations, such as Bass Pro Shops.
Elijah’s Xtreme tripled its revenue last year to $4.8 million, Elijah Morey said, and he projects the business will generate nearly $15 million in revenue this year.
He also believes the release of its new hot honey in early August will help drive revenue growth during the fourth quarter, its busiest time of year. Bottles of Elijah’s Xtreme hot sauce are selling on Amazon from $10 to $15.
And Elijah Morey wants to help his community by sharing the success of Elijah’s Xtreme. He emphasizes hiring locally and partnering with area nonprofits such as the the Greater Gaston Baptist Association.
Ambitious plans for the future
A bottle of hot sauce takes about 60 days for a person to use up, Elijah Morey said. A key part of his growth plan is producing snacks that bring customers back more frequently.
Elijah’s Xtreme started selling spicy beef jerky in November. Elijah Morey plans to expand the company’s snack offerings again in the fourth quarter of this year to supplement its release of hot honey
Elijah’s Xtreme single-day peak in sales was 4,000 orders last year. With the addition of new products, Elijah Morey projects the company will peak at 25,000 orders a day this year.
He’s also hiring more employees as part of his plan to grow the company.
And Bret Morey, who has over 30-years of marketing experience, oversees the marketing and sales team at Elijah’s Xtreme, in addition to handling inventory and other tasks.
One of the marketing and sales team’s top objectives is to expand its sales in retail stores and restaurants.
In addition to Bass Pro Shops, Elijah’s Xtreme is carried in local restaurants including The String Bean in Belmont and Will’s Doggn’ It Deli in Ranlo. Tijuana Flats, a Tex-Mex restaurant primarily in Florida, also carries Elijah Morey’s hot sauce.
Elijah Morey said the businesses’ TikTok content, such as when he packs orders on TikTok live, was the main driver of online sales last year, which made up 95.5% of the company’s total sales.
“I make all the content right now, and it’s wearing me out,” Elijah Morey said. “I’ve been doing it for a few years now and at this level, it’s pretty unsustainable.”
Finding the hard work is paying off
Elijah Morey hopes to have 100 employees by the end of the year, including several to help with social media management and content production.
For now, Elijah’s Xtreme employs 21 people. The additional workers would help handle the holiday rush, but the company will need more space to fit this many workers.
The company wants to find a warehouse with between 30,000 and 35,000 square feet., which will give it enough space to operate and still have room to grow.
“It’s been a process to get here,” Elijah Morey said. “The hard work is finally starting to pay off.”
