Summary

Gabriel Flores  0:00  

We're here all right. We rollin. Yeah, let me do a little spill here. We'll get yourself going. Cool. Hello everyone and welcome to the shades of entrepreneurship. This is your host, Mr. Gabriel Flores. Today I have the owner of nukes sauce. Jake, how are we doing? I'm this is the first time I think I've had guests that come and talk about hot sauce which is one of my passions. I love hot sauce. So let's let's introduce the world to Jake news. COMM How're you doing, buddy?

Jake Newcomb  0:33  

Hey, I'm doing pretty well. Pretty beat but I'm energized enough to chat. Thanks for having me on. We just did a food festival for the past two days. Probably the most successful two days we've had as a business. So I'm coming down from that wave. But it was super fun. We did snack Fest in Southeast Portland. And it was a blast. But yeah, feeling

Gabriel Flores  0:55  

excited. We're gonna have to get into details about that before we before we get into that let's introduce the world to Jake so who is Jake who is the owner of nukes sauce?

Jake Newcomb  1:04  

Oh, yeah. So I'm just a guy. I'm just a guy. I am originally from Maine. I came out to Portland seven years ago for audio internship, which is what I studied in school. And then I worked in the theater community in Portland for seven years as a sound engineer and sound designer and COVID came and as we all know, he can't go to events during that time. So all my gigs were canceled. I was laid off. I had a hot sauce recipe. I was traveling in Mexico quite a bit before the pandemic just like eating street tacos and street foods. A lot of like flavorful foods I've always loved to cook and I started messing around in the kitchen with a with a fruity hot sauce, bananas with habanero, which is pretty unique and started a Kickstarter I just I don't know how it happened was kind of almost like an accident. It just kind of happened overnight. I set up the Kickstarter, my friend Joe did the artwork, and things just started moving naturally. And here we are a couple years later. Growing growing pretty pretty well I'm full time doing this. I still freelance as an audio engineer occasionally, but I'm like Go Go Go on nukes. 100% and having a blast.

Gabriel Flores  2:16  

So for the audience at home what exactly is nukes hot sauce. Mandatory but let's let's get a little more detail.

Jake Newcomb  2:24  

Yeah, nukes hot sauce is all natural hot sauce based out of Portland, Oregon, we've got five flavors in our roster. And they all have fruit in them. So they have a sweetness to them. Except for our chipotle sauce, which is more of a root vegetable with smokier flavors, that's probably our best seller, we are going to do a one off like exclusive sauce that comes out next month, that's just going to be one batch and done. But we have our five staples, sauces that we sell at farmer's markets and whatnot. It's a fun company. We love making fun commercials like having fun with the brand, building in the community connecting with people. It's just, it's just been a lot of fun. I love to see people eating our hot sauces on their food and just really like makes my heart feel warm. It's an amazing feeling. So that's in a nutshell, I mean to hot sauce company. So that's basically what we got going on so far.

Gabriel Flores  3:19  

Well, let's let's talk about though how the concept kind of originated from because, you know, you mentioned you know, you got to the pandemic and you've been a fan of food, but why hot sauce? What and why you said you also had this recipe, you know, how did how did the concept decides that you know, this is it I'm gonna do the hot sauce.

Jake Newcomb  3:36  

Yeah, so I like I said I was traveling in Mexico quite a bit. And I was coming right off of a Mexico trip and I went straight to Boston where I used to, used to live and I got together with my friend Eric. And he let me stay at his house and he was telling me about cooking hot sauce and he and it was just a very entertaining like cool conversation. He was talking about how he had to wear like, a full like glove and mask and the whole thing was just I don't know, it was kind of cracking me up. But it was also just interesting. And he was really enthusiastic about it and and it just like was a it was just a nice conversation and I was excited to try something. He is making a raspberry habanero sauce, which I thought sounded interesting using fruit. And so then when I came back to MIT or back to Oregon, I like you know, I just was thinking about that I went to a Mexican market I saw some some peppers. I saw the bananas and I just naturally grabbed them and then I went home and I started just looking at basic recipes. Found some hot sauce forums is a hot pepper forum is one online with a lot of information on how to cook a hot sauce. And yeah, cranked out the first batch of what is now called the nukes kind of mild or the nukes original. It was a little a little weird at first because it's like a unique flavor profile but and it took some dialing in but we got it we got it dialed in and I gave some to friends and co workers and everyone was like you know what? I'm not trying to toot your own horn. Are to your horn. But like, because you're my friend, but this is actually really good, you should maybe should maybe considered making this a thing if you want to. And I guess it sounds cheesy, but I have always had a bit of a hustler in me like a side hustle, whether it's like flipping things on eBay, or thrifting, or all sorts of little things. Like I used to have a tape cassette record label where I would just dump tapes all day, and then send them out on mail order, like all these things that I've done in the past, and all of these things merged together into one thing. And then here, here we are with another fun project. And that's all it was, it was a fun project. But I got a lot of love back and a lot of support. And all of my other projects where I've put energy into making tapes and whatnot, like those never came back and like a financial reward, right? That was all just kind of like a side hobby. But this one was actually showing, like, if I really put the same amount of work that I do into my career into this, I think I could actually work for myself. And I just, I just really have been having a lot of fun with it. So I continue to do it. So yeah, that's a really long winded question. That's great answer. The caffeine is in the system.

Gabriel Flores  6:16  

You mentioned you know, your buddy was kind of talking about the preparation of hot sauce and having him you know, wear a suit and glove Look, look, tell me this. Tell me a little bit about this process. Because I'm very, it's very foreign to me. How do you How did you decide to like you said you didn't go to school for hot sauce making but you're pretty good and hot sauce? How'd you how'd you kind of go?

Jake Newcomb  6:37  

Actually, I could really nerd out for a second, because there's probably a few listeners that are looking for some really specific information. Yes, exactly. When I started, I found it was really hard to find specific information. Also, I should say, I am not I don't, I don't, you know, I've taken the courses for acidified foods, but you should always double check the actual FDA codes and everything before you just listen to some guy on a podcast. But basically, there's some basic rules with this style of hot sauce I make which is like you have to get it up to 180 degrees. When you cook it to kill any bacteria, you have to bottle it in a certain way. There's something called the hot fill hold method where you put it in the bottle at a hot temperature of 180. You cap it immediately flip it upside down to kill any possible bacteria on the cap. It also gives it a seal. So when you open it, you get that, that nice pop. And then the pH level is another thing for acidified foods, it has to be below 4.0 I believe maybe 4.1. Which that makes it shelf stable before until you open it. And yeah, so So there's all all these little things that you have to take a course. It's called a better process, control school, something like that. I took it online. And that really gets you going. That's a that's a good place to start. As far as making it. I've gone through a lot of different phases of how I make sauces, like how I bottle how many I make at a time I started just making 12 at a time in my kitchen. And that was that was a big day for me. The first year I did it all out of my home kitchen in a one bedroom apartment in Portland. It was crazy. There's no way other to say it was crazy. If my landlords listening like, I'm sorry, the house is gonna smell like peppers forever. But like, yeah, that was just bonkers. I was selling out constantly and cooking on my days off. It was nuts. Now I use a co packing facility in Tacoma, where I am actively there when they cook and I get to be part of the cooking process. But but it's so much more convenient for me where I can just make these kinds of there's still small batches, but they're they're bigger, and I can stock up and I don't have to do everything myself anymore, so I'm not gonna burn out. I like it. Yeah, yeah. Let's let's you have to wear gloves for sure.

Gabriel Flores  9:03  

Let's take a little bit about the transition, kind of like the vertical integration that you had from going into the kitchen to now having you know, outsourcing that. How did you find you know, a company to kind of help with that?

Jake Newcomb  9:16  

Yeah, so I use a company called SOS works in Tacoma. It took a lot of a lot of energy and work to find them. There's quite a few in Portland that are close, close by they're like I can drive in 10 minutes but for whatever reason, I would email them or call them and I would just not hear back from them. I would like get long winded emails that were like not they didn't feel human it felt like I was talking to like an automated response and but I called this one place it's in Tacoma called SOS works. And the guy picked up and we were able to have like a very down to earth conversation about how it works. And that's that's the type of relationship that I want and we he told me the price just it cost this much per unit. This Is the paperwork you need to have, like, you need to prove to me that you're, you know, a real business and all your recipes that are approved by the FDA, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then we just like kind of started working together. And it's been, it's been really good I, I have thought about using other co packers. But again, it's just like, the communication, isn't there? I don't know what's up with that. But, I mean, yeah, the relationship with sauce Works has been perfect for me. And it's also it's not super huge, where I need to make like 10,000 units to fill a minimum order or something, it's right at the level of growth. That's good for nukes right now where I can like, make 1000 bottles or something. And that'll last me, well, we'll see, I just made, I just made them. So let's see how long they last really. But it was a big shift. A lot of people don't do it ever. Like there, there are a lot of successful companies that they never co pack, they've been in it for 510 years or more. Their favorite part of the process is cooking the hot sauce that they want to like have the marketing go to and other people or other people, they want to like have the selling of the sauces we put on other people, they want to stay in the kitchen, they want to build their own facilities. So there's no there's no like path you have to go on. I've just found that I personally love the marketing side, I love engaging with the community being out there selling selling it to people doing the events. And the cooking part is pretty simple for our recipe. So I feel like I can dump it on another company. And the quality is still there. So that's that's how that's worked like it.

Gabriel Flores  11:33  

You know, one of the things you kind of mentioned, you know, this is a lot of work. Are you started in the one bedroom apartment by yourself? How difficult was it to start this business?

Jake Newcomb  11:49  

That's a good question. I think I think it was pretty hard. Honestly, there were a lot of difficulties, there still are a lot of difficulties. I'm still learning a lot of things, a lot of nuances. The beginning stages were extremely hard to figure out like, I was very scared my first like, three to six months of making a safe food product and like shipping it and like having strangers eating it and making sure that I had checked all the boxes of what needs to be done to make something safe because it's pretty bizarre when you when you make a food product. And it just like it just started happening or started coming in. And I was like I think I can I think I think I can sell this right. And I had to check and make sure there were a lot of like unknowns, and I can be kind of a worry guy like I can worry and get nervous. And I I had a lot of anxiety at the beginning stages. But I've grown to once I realized I'm all good. I've checked with like the my Oda representative. And, you know, I know I know how to launch a product now successfully. That that feels easier to do now, and any bumps in the road that come up. You know, I just I just try to navigate them with ease and remind myself that I'm doing this because it's fun, and it's rewarding to work for yourself. And the struggles are all I told the story once on a podcast of like the first really big order I got I burned the batch I got 1000 bottle order for me that was huge at the time. I was making 50 bottles at a time. And they said we needed it next month in New York like shipped on a pallet and I didn't know how to scale up my recipe that big. I didn't know how to ship a pallet. I just said yes. Because I needed to pay my bills and I wanted to like I wanted to do it. And then I went and I bought all these ingredients. I didn't have any money. Like I grew up like my first job was Wendy's. So like I like I had money but like not, I still don't like have money I just like, but I was like this is gonna wipe me out and I bought like you know, $1,000 worth of ingredients or something and went into the kitchen and screwed up and I like burnt half the batch and I literally cried that night. Like I was like so upset. But I ended up pulling myself back up and making the orders like 100 bottles at a time of the kitchen and then getting the order fulfilled. So those things suck like growing pains suck, but they are it's so cool to look back and be like, that didn't get me that didn't kill me and I here I am stronger. Right. So it feels feels good to look back on that stuff. The struggles.

Gabriel Flores  14:38  

Yeah, and it's super important to kind of highlight those things you and I talk about this often, like one of the things we talked about was imposter syndrome at some point. And I'm talking about you know, it's imperative that when you have a win you you really celebrate those wins because sometimes they you know, for some there's sometimes few and far between right and for others they might be a lot but At the end of the day is celebrating those moments because the sweet isn't as sweet without the bitter.

Jake Newcomb  15:06  

Amen, I hear you and I definitely struggle with the imposter syndrome because I'm a white guy making hot sauces, right? That's a thing. It's true. It's a thing. I'm also not a classically trained chef. Like, I just like cooking. And people like the sauces and that's it's that simple. So I'm gonna keep making them, the people eat them. So, but I do struggle sometimes when I'm like, Oh, these guys like trained at the Culinary Arts School, and their sauces are are killer. And but I know that mine are too so like, I gotta just like, take a step back and be like, it's all good man. Yeah, like everyone. Yeah.

Gabriel Flores  15:46  

Yeah, one of the things you talked about was financing. You talked about, you know, kind of that process. How did you finance this? You talked about the Kickstarter. Did you do also like any any venture capital? Or are you very kind of grassroots effort?

Jake Newcomb  15:59  

Yeah, grassroots, pretty much I can nerd out about money. And I'm pretty, pretty much a penny pincher, I was talking to my friend today, he was talking about how he went out last night, and like, blew a bunch of money at the bar or whatever. And he's, like, had a crazy night out. And I was like, Dude, I can't even like, like, last night, I had the best nukes day ever. Like, we sold a lot of sauce. And I went out for a drink. And I was like, how much is the well, whiskey can cost me? You know, I'm like, I need to let go of that man. Because I grew up with like, nothing. So but yeah, to answer your question, I just have a tight budget. I try not to take out any loans or debt. I am a debt free guy. I don't like borrowing money if I don't have to. But that being said, I did just take out a bit of a loan to fulfill a pretty big order, but I pay it back within a month because that order is already fulfilled. And I'll be getting a check in 30 days. I think as I grow, you know if you know, something like Whole Foods, or who knows hot ones hits me up and says, Hey, we need 14,000 bottles buy, you know, November, then you know, that could be six figures. And I don't have six figures. So I'll take a loan out for that. I think it's smart to like get the order and get it in writing. And then you know, you're good. And then you can why not take a loan? You know, you know, the money's coming in. But I haven't I've had a lot of people tell me they would buy equity, they would tell me tell me when you're ready for investments. And I have friends that have money in there. And they really do want to give me a good loan or for equity. And I just haven't really opened that door. I did get into a business class recently. And we're going to talk about that. And how to manage those conversations. Because yeah, I don't know, Nooks nooks could be just a hobby for another year, or it could become a multimillion dollar business. Like that's not a crazy thing. And I don't want to shoot myself in the foot and give 10% to a friend for borrowing $10,000. And then three years from now, like oh, yeah, well, I hope you enjoy your ginormous change.

Gabriel Flores  18:08  

Yeah, look at the Amazon split recently, right, the 30 to one split. I mean, you have what something like 1000 balls with Amazon terms, or 1000 shares for like 300,000 chairs.

Jake Newcomb  18:20  

Yeah, brilliant. So I also invest all of my money, like I invest in Roth IRA, I invest in like single stocks, and I also invest in crypto. And I've been doing that for a long time. So I feel like I've just really had my mind on money management for a while. So I'm just, I don't know, I just, you know, it's not all sales that that goes back into the nooks it's also like investments and and savings sometimes. But,

Gabriel Flores  18:47  

you know, you you brought up something that's very important that I think I've actually highlighted yet on the show and IRAs, right their retirement and why that is so important. So for the folks at home that may not be aware of this, but you as an individual can put away $19,000 500 annually away pre tax. So every year pre tax you put that money away and now why is that important? There's a few there's reasons why that's important. One, it can lower your tax your payable tax bracket. So I believe the tax bracket if you make over 82 580 2500, you'll be paying 24% taxes versus if you're under that 82,000 You're actually going to be paying 22% taxes. So let's give an example. Let's say you make $100,000 a year and you put away 19,500 Away so now instead of your you know your salary at the end of the year for taxable income, instead of it being $100,000 at 24%. You're now at 81,500 at 22% because you put away that 19 Five, so those are just little things for you to think about it and why it's so important because money putting money away investing is so important. Crypto is a great way to diversify your your assets as well. Nf T's are different thing you know but those are coming up as well. There's so many different forms. Now take, is this your first business?

Jake Newcomb  20:06  

Ah, yeah, I think it's fair to say this is my first real business. Yeah.

Gabriel Flores  20:11  

And you mentioned you've been kind of going out and like going to trade shows and meeting with people in education. Why do you win your perspective? Why is that so important?

Jake Newcomb  20:22  

And networking is, is not only, like, just fun to socialize and learn, you learn a lot when you talk to people in the industry, but it's just a just a good way to build your brand and get the word out of your product. And, yeah, it's great. I mean, I'm always selling sauces at these events, too. So it's just a way to, to, you know, pay the bills.

Gabriel Flores  20:44  

Yeah. And so how do you build the brand? How do you sell your brand? How do you market your brand?

Jake Newcomb  20:51  

You know, I, I'm kind of just rolling with it. I don't have any business backgrounds to be completely clear, which I think it's kind of fun to be building a business with like, it just feels kind of like this wild thing I'm doing. But I, I honestly, like, I think the stuff that really works is collaborating with other artists and people that you genuinely enjoy. Like, I grew up in the music industry. So I collaborate with bands I love and it because I put that work in because I love I love the band genuinely. And we'll make a special bottle. And then that resonates with their fans, and it just feels good. I think I think like, if you hold a product in your hand that comes from like, love, as corny as that might sound. But if like something like something like love was used when you created it, then like it resonates off of it. And you can even go as like, this is pretty hippie dippie. But like, you can even go into the cooking process. Like if someone's stressed out, and they're like, I gotta make hot sauce again today. And they're just like, not even really doing it with care, then it's different with someone who's like, you know, loves what they're doing. And like, I don't know, you could probably taste that in a weird way. But yeah, collaborating with people you enjoy? Like, I don't know, it's kind of like nukes is a reflection of myself in some ways. And it just feels like it resonates with people in an authentic way. Because of that, I guess. Does that make sense?

Gabriel Flores  22:21  

Yeah, completely. And, you know, one thing that kind of leads me to is, you know, starting this what, what motivates you? What is your motivating factor?

Jake Newcomb  22:32  

Fun humor, flavor. Family, friends, entertainment, like getting together sharing a meal, having a good time?

Gabriel Flores  22:43  

What would you say, you know, going through this process has been surprisingly hard.

Jake Newcomb  22:51  

Sometimes, like, I'm still learning about, like, the ebb and flow of business and like how busy things can get, and then how slow things can get. I'm about to get extremely busy. And I have been the past four months, I haven't had any markets. So there's been a lot of me just sitting in my apartment, kind of feeling like I'm twiddling my thumbs. And all my friends have jobs and their nine to fivers, or their you know, like, and I'm just like, Am I willing and that feeling, but I know I'm working from my computer every day, I'm emailing people. I'm working on the next project, the next recipe, the next collaboration, but sometimes it's kind of like a lonely path where you're just like, Yeah, I don't have a lot of friends that own businesses. So it's like, I'm very much alone in that. That that can be a struggle for me, I'm not connecting with similar folks in the industry or something like that. And like, figuring out if it's normal to have these slow periods, I'm pleased to say that I kept thinking that during these past four months, they would be the first times where I wasn't going to be able to pay the bills. But every month, that's not been the case. So and these are the slow months, so I should, I should be stoked about that. But those are kind of some of the struggles there. And also, like differentiating yourself amongst a wall of hot sauces, where there's a lot of similar flavors and trying to make like unique, something unique, you know, there's, there's stores I'm in where there's just over 50 bottles next to each other, and you're like, how do you? How do you differentiate yourself? And so that's kind of a challenge.

Gabriel Flores  24:42  

Yeah, and I must admit, the, the sense of loneliness, that kind of sets in, I think, amongst amongst a lot of entrepreneurs, has been resonating, you know, true with myself, including with all the folks I've been interviewing. And that's kind I'm really why I started this podcast right to kind of get out and I'm an extrovert and wanted to meet with people want to talk with people rather than like, say, Hey, how are you doing? You know, and, and so folks at home, I think it's imperative to also I think I've said this before, but it's okay to ask each other Hey, how are you doing? You know, and, you know, really be genuine about it. Because I think people, we're all going through this pandemic together. I'm not sure. Have you ever been a pandemic before? This? My first one? My first one? Yeah. So none of us know what we're doing. And there's gonna be people that are affected differently from it. And so please don't you know, there's going to be companies that are still going to be requiring masks. And please, please be respectful of that. We don't know their backstories. Right. We don't know what's going on. And so just just be respectful that now Jake, what would you say, going through this process that you've maybe found surprisingly easy? Has there anything been easy?

Jake Newcomb  25:51  

Yeah. selling this stuff has been easy.

Gabriel Flores  25:58  

About July, I think, I think you're onto something I'm telling you. A lot of people know about this sauce now.

Jake Newcomb  26:03  

Yeah, I thought that that was gonna be the hardest thing. And then I did my first farmers market and I set up with my little lemonade step style stand, you know, just a little table over sauces. And I remember saying, like, I sell eight bottles today, I'll be so happy. And because that'll pay for my booth. And eight bottles are just gone in an hour and there was more time to sell so and if the product sells itself, which is just really nice. Of course it helps when you push it and you tell people about it and you engage with people but if I did want to be lazy one day just kind of sit back sometimes we'll do as an experiment. And see what happens. The soft seems to sell itself so that's that was a lot easier than I thought I thought it was gonna have to work hard to move the product but it seems to seems to go pretty, pretty smoothly.

Gabriel Flores  26:50  

And when you make something good, it's kind of easy how how quickly that things came to flat itself. Now what as a as a small business owner, what what do you say? What keeps you up at night?

Jake Newcomb  27:02  

Oh, um, oh, let's see. That's, that's kind of a tough one. Actually, I sleep pretty well.

Gabriel Flores  27:19  

Sometimes

Jake Newcomb  27:22  

it's hard to turn the turn the switch off. Sometimes when you get excited about making something excited about you know, I do a lot of graphic design for the companies or sometimes I'll just I'll just like burn the midnight oil working on a new design or something but stress and stuff like that. I don't I don't feel like I have a lot of stress with this anymore. Like it comes and goes. But right now it's pretty. It's not that it's pretty, pretty groovy right now things like kind of groove and grooving along yeah, sometimes it's sometimes you don't have a problem.

Gabriel Flores  27:53  

No problems are good. I would mind no problems. But that's when

Jake Newcomb  27:57  

I that's when I wonder is like should I have problems?

Gabriel Flores  28:01  

That's what that imposter syndrome starts to set in, right? Because like, oh, man, this is going so well. For so long. I'm kind of waiting for something to come in. Just, you know, yeah, put a wrench in it.

Jake Newcomb  28:11  

Yeah, I know. But no, I don't have anything specific that keeps me up at night, other than maybe just being able to having the ability to stop myself from working, you know, because I get excited about work. And I want to I want to keep going like I'm getting I'm starting to work at a practice of just like turning notifications off and like stop stopping, like replying to Instagram, and emails. But if you catch me between, like 8am to like six, I am like, pretty much always responding as fast as I can. And I just, I just love. I love doing this. So I just can't turn myself off unless I like set rules for myself. So like, you're probably one of the struggles.

Gabriel Flores  28:55  

Now how do you track all this information as a business? You know, you got sales coming in, you got new clients coming in? You got vendors? What do you use to track all this stuff?

Jake Newcomb  29:05  

For accounting stuff, I use QuickBooks, and I think this year will be the first year where I actually hire someone to look over my QuickBooks, but I've done the training online to like it's pretty, pretty basic. I mean, link your business bank accounts to it and make sure you only use the card when it's a business expense and whatnot, get those things dialed in, and then let it run itself. So that's what I do with that. Wholesale. I have basically just a template email that is just a quick blurb, about our sauces who we are our prices. And I just email that out to a bunch of stores that I want to get into. And maybe I'll hear back from one of 20 and then maybe they don't even want to put an order in. They want me to send them free sauce and I'll do that because that's just part of the game. I send a lot of free stuff out just to like try to get an order. And I budget for that. You know, like I'm going to eat like $300 where The Free sausage shipped to all these places. And, um, it comes back, you know, usually you get rewarded, because those people will put an order in, and then it moves there and you and you have a long term relationship with those people. I also for established wholesale people I will like, and I have another template for like, emailing them once a month and saying, what's up with the inventory? Let me know I can ship out tomorrow or I can drop off tomorrow. So just keeping the conversation flowing, staying connected with like, your customers is super important. So yeah, that's, that's basically what I do there.

Gabriel Flores  30:37  

I like it. Now, what advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs?

Jake Newcomb  30:43  

Oh, yeah. Well, for hot sauce, people specifically might be what I should focus on, because that's what I know. I would definitely check out the hot pepper for I'm it's a really good resource and active community of folks that are making flavorful sauces. And some of them are just having fun. Some of them are building a company and living off of it. You can ask all sorts of you can nerd out about the science, you can talk about fermented sauce, if you're into that. You can talk about all sorts of things in there. Great resource, look into starting a Kickstarter or a fundraising campaign that worked really well for us. I did not expect it, but it got funded in 24 hours. So that was that was really great. Yeah, that's a good place to start. You know, use the internet. What the hell, it's 2022 the internet's amazing. It's just like, so much information are spoiled, and people would rather watch Tik Tok videos of people like petting their cat and actually learn something.

Gabriel Flores  31:41  

You know, it's weird. Yeah. For folks at home, I don't think you understand the privilege we are at this point in time in our lives, where we truly do have all the information that you can possibly ever need for any subject at your fingertips. Now, previously, we didn't that last generations did, they just had to go to a library, right and a little bit harder. But we truly do have. Now it's also imperative to make this comment, make sure your information is accurate,

Jake Newcomb  32:10  

I was gonna say we got a lot of information

Gabriel Flores  32:13  

accurately and make and if those sources side, I assited make sure to look at that source, because sometimes even cited sources are inaccurate, or they're intentionally trying to skew a specific message. And so just be mindful of that. But it's very true that the amount of education and I hope this podcast serves of some form of different mediums to provide some insight into this world. But it there's just so much so much knowledge and information out there to be had for a lot of people. Just you just gotta

Jake Newcomb  32:45  

Yeah, anyone listening to this is doing is doing it because they're listening to an educational podcast. So yeah, this is a perfect example. Or we

Gabriel Flores  32:53  

can be like Billy Madison, like you have now gotten dumber for having sat to know. So for the listeners at home, where can they find you? Where can they get some of your sauce work? Do you have a brick and mortar? Do your you're at like a talk about some of the locations in particular some of the farmer markets?

Jake Newcomb  33:14  

Yeah, let's do that. So first off, nukes, sauces and ew ks sauces.com. has all the information of where all of our stores that we're at, and also as all the farmers markets we're at and of course you can order online and we ship pretty much every day. So that's all you really need but we are gearing up for our busiest season yet, like seven me to seven farmers markets a week during the summer. here in Portland, we got the lense market St. John's market Canton. Hillsboro Tigard one in Vancouver. And can I remember the other one? Szymanski Szymanski, that's all seven. Wow. So we're doing those gonna hire some hands to help out the booths. Let's see what else that pretty much covers it. We got the Portland hot sauce Expo coming up in August. I'm flying across the country to Boston to do a Boston hot sauce Expo in May. That'll be fun. Wood berries, hot sauce, they're throwing that that should be fun. I haven't actually met these people in real life. We've been Instagram friends, I'm ready to get out of the phone and because that's where the real stuff that I learned the phone, but I'm like, way more into real life conversation. So those are some exciting things and a lot more festivals coming up this summer. So if you follow us on Instagram, that's where we hang out. Mostly you'll find all that stuff.

Gabriel Flores  34:47  

You have you got yourself a jam packed schedule coming up. I'm really excited. What Where do you where you kind of do you see yourself in five years?

Jake Newcomb  34:57  

Hmm that's a great call. Question. Ideally, I would love to see us in as a national brand. I want to be available to everyone in the country, and I want to be able to travel while I'm doing that I want to be able to run nukes from my computer. I don't know, that seems kind of wild, but it does seem possible. So we'll see. But I'm also like, kind of Buddhist by nature. So like, if I find myself, right where I am today, five years from now, that sounds great, too. So there's no I don't want to build this huge expectation for myself, and then be disappointed.

Gabriel Flores  35:39  

Nice, nice. Well, for folks at home, please visit nooks online, visit some of the locations he's going to be at all these farmers market in all sorts of communities. So it's also important because there's so many other vendors at farmer's markets that you can help support as well. Absolutely. Please do get out there. Jake, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. I really do appreciate it. For folks at home, please subscribe to the podcast. You can check us out on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. And yes, I did open a tick tock. I have not posted a single thing on it. But it's there. I have the have the user name and everything just so somebody can't take it. But Jake, thank you so much for again for your time for coming on the show. I really do appreciate it. Again, for those folks at home. Please do follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or subscribe on the podcast feeds. Thank you and have a great night.