Meet Kali and Clay Vansteel of Sendy Sauce Hot Sauce in Eagle

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kali and Clay Vansteel.

Kali and Clay, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
We started making hot sauce in our kitchen early in 2019. We shared our sauce with friends and family in the early months and kept getting requests for us to make more. One thing led to another and everyone finally convinced us we should be selling it so we decided to start Sendy Sauce Hot Sauce. We started social media pages to spread the word. In the beginning, we only took orders through Instagram and Facebook private messages. The beginning of the 2019 summer, we realized demand was getting to be too much to keep up with, so we teamed up with a co-packer in Denver. Our first batch of sauce was packed on July 17th, 2019.

25 gallons. What are we going to do with 25 gallons of hot sauce, roughly 672 bottles. We gave ourselves a year to sell it. Quickly, we started going out to local businesses asking them to become wholesale partners with us. The response was awesome! In three weeks, we were out of sauce! From there everything grew, we added a second flavor, we started having 50-gallon batches made, then 100. We created and designed a website to streamline out of state sales. We added t-shirts, stickers, and buffs… currently we have shipped to 49 of the 50 states and are in over 60 locations from Denver to Basalt! We won a Silver Medal in the Vail Daily’s BEST OF for 2019-2020 and are nominated for “New Business of the Year” through Vail Valley Partnership.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It’s a big learning curve, starting your own business – especially in the food industry. There’s a lot of rules and regulations to follow. I wouldn’t call anything we’ve gone through an obstacle, we see it all as a part of the growing process. Our mindset has always been based around the idea that we didn’t really know anything about what we were getting into so we better enjoy the ride because we’ve got a lot to learn. I think we’ve been really lucky, the road has been mostly smooth and when issues come up we’ve leaned on friends and people in the community for advice.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Sendy Sauce Hot Sauce story. Tell us more about the business.
We are a hot sauce company that was born in Eagle, CO. We’ve been packaging hot sauce since early 2019. We have two flavors that come in two different sizes. Our logo is definitely what we’re known for; we’ve always been a focus on creating a brand – not just sauce. So we sell apparel with the Sendy logo as well.

We are most proud of where the business is going and our community involvement. It is so fun for us to meet people we don’t know who have tried our sauce. We get so many awesome pictures sent to us of people using our sauce. We recently partnered with The Land and Rivers Fund in Eagle County to give back 1% of our sales to preservation of healthy rivers, clean water, and conscientious development. We adopted a stretch of Mountain Bike Trail through Vail Valley Mountain Trails – a non-profit that supports sustainable biking and hiking. Clay volunteered for a program called SOS Outreach, that provides strong, positive adult leadership for youth. We’re growing – quickly. Our hope is that with our new partnership with Colorado Craft Distributors, new doors will open to getting involved in the Denver community.

I think what set’s us apart is that we are a community-oriented business. We’ve seen first hand what the power of local support can do for a small business and we want to share that ideal with other small businesses. Our belief is that there’s room for everyone and there’s no reason not to help one another in any way that we can. We would be here today without the help of our friends, families, and other small businesses support. We are ready to share the wealth!

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I think it’s a combination of luck and hard work. We’re lucky that Clay is a very outgoing, personable guy who has a lot of friends. But more importantly, we’ve both worked hard to get where we are. In the early months of Sendy, we were hitting the pavement, walking store to store asking people if they wanted to sell our sauce. We currently deliver to all of our 60+ locations whenever they need restocked, we’ve worked hard to be recognizable faces and have strong relationships with the businesses we partner with.

Contact Info:

• Website: sendysauce.com
• Email: sendysaucehotsauce.com
• Instagram: @sendysauce

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