Underwood Ranches is in the hot sauce business. Not just as a pepper grower, but the whole process. Or, as the tagline on the bottle says, seed to sauce.
For almost 30 years, it was the exclusive pepper grower for the famous Huy Fong sriracha sauce. That relationship imploded five years ago, and Underwood lost more than 75% of its business from one season to the next. You can read more about that in our June cover story.
I first learned about the line of products when I reached out to Craig Underwood at the beginning of the pandemic. I was seeking advice on which topics to cover, considering the world had just turned upside down.
Along with the farm marketing topics he mentioned, he told me he had just launched Underwood Ranches’ hot sauce line. What unfortunate timing for launching a new product line.
“Our original marketing plan was destroyed when all the festivals were canceled. So, we pivoted to online sales and promotion,” Underwood wrote to me. “It’s now hard to get retailers’ attention about a new product. Amazon and social media are working.”
Through the pandemic, the Underwood team has continued its soft launch. Now that farmers’ markets are open again, they’re selling the sauces locally. A few local grocery stores stock the line, and sales continue through Amazon and their own site.
The Right Stuff
To keep things in perspective, the sauces are a small part of the operation’s bottom line. It’s still a traditional, large-scale grower.
It will not put Huy Fong’s ubiquitous sriracha products out of business.
That said, it brims with potential. It’s a quality, flavorful product, or at least the ones I’ve tried so far have been. It has great packaging and a killer tag line. All it takes is for the right store buyer to come along, and this division of Underwood Ranches can be enormously profitable.
What I like most about it, though, is the mindset it implies. One way Underwood Ranches is recovering nicely from losing most of its business five years ago is by diversifying its customers and crops. These sauces show that the Underwood family is willing to mix up their basic business model. They’re not just in the grower and farm market business. They’re now in the processing, bottling, and shipping business.
They’re not out of the woods. But the family’s determined and flexible approach to the future promises great things.
Oh, One More Thing
Considering your own line of food products? Take a look at Underwood Ranches’ product design for inspiration. The product line currently includes eight sauces, both hot and barbecue.
Underwood Ranches’ logo cleverly plays on the fact the company is a ranch. Just not the kind of ranch expected by those outside the vegetable industry.
Playing Up the Pepper
As a grower, Underwood Ranches naturally focuses on the main ingredient for these products — vegetables. Instead of just calling a product Mild BBQ Sauce, it’s a Mild Red Jalapeño BBQ Sauce. And its seeds to sauce tagline emphasizes that these sauces originate on a farm.
Photo courtesy of Underwood Ranches