Too Small To Be That Big

A recent 4th of July display at Bi-Rite Market

We have some news to pass along, as we’re making a major change to how we sell our sauce. We’re no longer going to be selling SFQ at the larger grocery chains, but instead are going to focus on selling directly to the public through our online store, as well as the occasional festival. 

The sauce will still be available at a few select neighborhood markets in San Francisco, like Bi-Rite, but the margins were just too low to continue selling at the Whole Foods of the world. When we created SFQ, we knew selling retail would be a challenge, since it was an expensive sauce to produce, and we weren’t prepared to sacrifice the quality to make it less expensive to make. When you tack on the distributor costs, selling retail just didn’t add up. 

We’ll continue to sell and ship the sauce from here, as well as do the occasional pubic event, and hope to enjoy your continued support. Feel free to drop us a line about larger orders, and if you live in the Bay Area, we’ve been known to sell a little SFQ right from our garage…I mean, warehouse. Happy barbequing, and we hope to hear from you soon!

Breaking News: SFQ Has Been Featured in Martha Stewart Living!

We’re very proud to announce that SFQ has just been featured in the February issue of Martha Stewart Living! For an artisan food producer to make her editor’s picks is a little bit like being knighted. As Martha would say, 'it's a good thing.'

Just in case you decided to run out, and get a copy of the magazine, let me save you some time, and tell you it’s on page 56. We just got back from Healdsburg, where we delivered a fresh supply of the sauce to Shed, which the magazine chose to list as the retail source.

A sincere thanks to everyone at MSL for including us in this issue, and we look forward to a new audience learning about, and hopefully tasting the sauce. This is not a sponsored post, but I feel obligated to share the fact I’ve always been a huge fan of the magazine, and used to proudly display tall stacks of all the issues I’d collected. It was the source of so much information, and inspiration.

I met Martha only once, way back in 1996; if you can call giving someone a Bloody Mary as a caterer at a wedding reception, meeting someone. Even though our encounter was brief, and 20 years ago, I can say she was as in control, and gracious in person, as she appears on TV. It goes without saying that women like Martha Stewart helped make what I do now, possible. Here’s a link to the magazine, in case you’d like to start your own stack.

A Happy New Year Announcement!

We wanted to wish you all a very Happy New Year, and let you know that SFQ is now available in Southern California! We’ve shipped a fair amount of sauce to our friends down south, but now you can find SFQ at two brand new retail locations.

The sauce is available at Farmshop, 225 26th St, in Santa Monica; as well as The Market Hall, 969 Market St, in San Diego. I haven’t been to Farmshop yet, but thanks to my sister Jennifer getting married on New Year’s Eve, I was able to stop by The Market Hall to see the sauce proudly displayed on both their shelves and butcher counter (pictured here)!

If you’re near either of those stores, I hope you pay them a visit, and not just to pick up a few jars of sauce, but also to see all the other wonderful artisan food products these two great new markets offer. One of our resolutions for 2016 is to make SFQ available in more markets across this great, barbecue-sauce-loving nation.

Which reminds me, if you have a lead on a store in your area that would be a good candidate to carry the sauce, let us know, and we’ll try to make it happen. Thank you, and best wishes in the New Year!