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Some Like It Hot Business is heating up for St. Louis’ Anderson & Son Pepper Co. Written by
CHERYL BAEHR
J
oel Anderson can pinpoint the exact moment he developed his passion for spicy food. The incident happened when he was about nine years old and came courtesy of his grandmother — even though she had no intention of sparking his interest in such an intense fashion. “My grandma put a habanero in a pot of either chili or soup to give a little bit of spice to the entire pot,” recalls Anderson. “I scooped out a bowl, and it had the pepper in it. I didn’t realize I wasn’t supposed to eat it, but I ate the whole thing off the spoon. I was shoving ice on my face and sticking my head in the freezer for an hour. Up until that point, I’d never really had anything spicy, and I think that experience, while awful, was really interesting. I still haven’t figured out why eo le who like spicy food like to feel uncomfortable, but as a kid, it was kind of a risk — dangerous, but it hurt in a way that didn’t leave a mark.” As the founder of the hot-sauce brand Anderson & Son Pepper Co. (www.andersonpepperco.com), Anderson is now the one responsible for zinging people’s palates, albeit in a more intentional fashion. Since September, he’s been selling his signature “Don’t Touch the Baby” hot sauce and “Reaper Ranch” seasoning blend through his online store, still in a bit of disbelief that people are giving him money to do something he loves. That love of spicy food has been something that has stuck with him even since that initial shock in his grandmother’s kitchen. For as long as he can remember, family and friends would get him different hot sauces for gifts, and he found himself always seeking out
Joel Anderson’s pepper passion has turned into a hot-sauce business that he launched in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic. | JOEL ANDERSON different brands to try. However, it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that he got into the sauce-making business himself. After moving into a new home, Anderson planted a garden filled with everything from lettuce to tomatoes to eggplant. Peppers were a small part of the effort, but over the years, they grew to be a larger and larger component until he had converted his entire backyard into a pepper cultivation area. Overrun with peppers, he decided to get serious about learning to make hot sauce. It only took one batch for Anderson to realize he had a knack for hot sauce-making. Drawing upon his background in advertising, he made a label for fun, naming
his sauce after a phrase his wife would always yell at him when he was working with peppers. “She’d always say, ‘Don’t touch the baby!’ because my hands were covered in hot peppers,” says Anderson. “He was six months old when I started making hot sauce, and I definitely didn’t want to transfer that to him. I made a label just for fun, and the name stuck.” Anderson launched an Instagram account for the brand in 2019 and built so much enthusiasm for it that he decided to make the o eration official. He linked up with the culinary incubator STL Foodworks, where he used their commissary kitchen and expertise in the business’ logistics (licenses and certifications to es-
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tablish Anderson & Son Pepper o. as a bona fide hot sauce label. That it’s taken off as well as it has is proof to Anderson that people can taste the passion he puts into everything he does. “I think a lot of what hot sauce is to me is being able to think creatively,” says Anderson. “I’ve been working on a lot of other people’s brands over the years in my day ob, so trying to figure out my own is really cool. But really, the biggest part is knowing I’m making something that my son is a part of. I’m not saying he’s going to be in the hot-sauce business — we gave him a Flamin’ Hot Cheeto one time and he wasn’t so sure about it — but the idea that maybe there is some-
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