It all started with the “spicy dinners,” said David “Vid” Lynch, owner of Torchbearer Sauces.
“A few of my friends and I used to host parties in college, and we’d cook spicy foods and people really liked it,” he said.
Spurred on by the popularity of the get-togethers, Vid and his friends took a road trip to Texas to stock up on habaneros. The ambitious bunch came back to Harrisburg with more than 600 pounds of the peppers; then they commenced to chop and freeze. After exhausting that supply, the students decided to grow their own.
Eventually the dinners ended, but the habanero harvest continued unabated.
“We didn’t want them to go to waste, so we made the Sultry sauce as a way to preserve them,” said Lynch, referring to his first foray into the hot sauce business.
Friends loved it. So, bolstered by that feedback, Lynch and his partners, Ben Smith and Tim Wortman, decided to test it out on the general public. “We knew we’d need to have a bit of a product line to begin marketing, so we started out with six varieties,” he said.
Lynch enlisted the help of friend Rich Hauck, owner of Hauck Interactive in Harrisburg, to create colorful, eye-popping label graphics to help them stand out among the competition. Pretty soon, the product took off.
“For the first four years, we outsourced the packing and production, then we started making it ourselves and people liked it better, even though it was the same product. Since then, sales have grown 10-fold,” said Lynch.
Today, the company employs five full-time and 20 part-time workers. Lynch’s parents, Tom and Tricia, are co-owners and also lend a hand turning out more than 20 varieties of Torchbearer Sauces.
The products are marketed at more than 100 festivals, 27 farmers markets and 200 stores around the country, including Wegmans, where the Torchbearer crew will be offering samples in upcoming weeks. Customers who have the temerity to taste the sauces with colorful names like Zombie Apocalypse, Ultimate Annihilation and The Rapture, should come prepared with liquid refreshment, especially those who are brave enough to try The Rapture, which contains two types of Scorpion pepper.
“Scorpion peppers are the hottest in the world, so I stick to The Zombie Apocalypse myself,” he said, referring to the sauce containing ghost chilies, which are mild in comparison. “Rapture is just evil,” he added.
But it’s not all hot and spicy in the Torchbearer world. Barbecue sauces, honey mustard and garlic sauces account for two-thirds of the company’s sales. “The Honey Barbecue on wings and ribs is awesome, and the Carolina Barbecue won an award for best salad dressing in a competition in Texas. It’s great on pulled pork,” said Lynch.
Brandon Sarzynski, a Mechanicsburg resident who has been a fan for years, said Honey Barbecue is his current favorite. “I use it on everything from burgers to mac and cheese. My fall favorite is the Mango Papaya. It goes great on pumpkin pie and ice cream paired with a nice pumpkin ale,” he said.
The current bestseller, however, is a flavor bomb called “Oh My Garlic,” according to Lynch. “People put it on salads, subs, pizza—we haven’t found much it doesn’t work on,” he said.
Later in the year, Torchbearer Sauces will be rolling out six new flavors, including a horseradish sauce, just in time for the holidays, according to Lynch.
The company has faced and overcome challenges throughout the years, most recently adapting to a surge in growth. “We sold about 50,000 bottles last year, and we’re projecting sales of about 90,000 this year, so we’re tweaking efficiency to improve production,” said Lynch, who foresees the company needing more warehouse space in a few years.
“It will have to evolve, no question. We’re approaching the point where we’re going to have to do something different, that’s for sure,” he said.
And that sounds like a tasty problem to have.
To learn more about Torchbearer Sauces, visit www.torchbearersauces.com
