Some businesses start with a business plan. Ours started with a feeling we wanted to share.
On our honeymoon in St. Thomas, we tasted a Scotch bonnet sauce at a meal there. It wasn’t just hot — it was bright, layered, and full of flavor. It made the food better instead of covering it up.
What stayed with us happened after we got home. Back in San Diego, tasting that sauce again took us straight back to Saint Thomas — to that trip, that place, that moment. One taste, and we were there again.
That feeling — not that sauce — is what became San Diego Pepper Company.
To be clear: we didn’t bring home a recipe, and we have never tried to copy or recreate that St. Thomas sauce. It belonged to that place and that trip. What we brought home was an idea: that a taste can hold a place, and bring it back to you long after you’ve left.
Inspired in St. Thomas, made from scratch in San Diego
We’re Kieran and Jacklyn Little-Parhar, a husband-and-wife team, and we founded San Diego Pepper Company in 2022. We didn’t come from a big food company, and we didn’t start with outside funding. We started self-funded, in small batches, developing our own recipes here in San Diego from scratch.
Our sauces are ours — different peppers, different ingredients, and different stories. None of them is a recreation of the sauce we tasted on our honeymoon. What they share with that moment is a principle we took to heart: real pepper flavor first, with heat that supports it instead of taking over.
That principle has guided every recipe since. If a sauce doesn’t make eggs, tacos, grilled vegetables, or a weeknight dinner taste better, it doesn’t go in a bottle — no matter how hot we could make it. But flavor was only half of it. The other half was the feeling that came with it, and that’s what we really wanted to build.
A San Diego company that happens to make hot sauce
We wanted to create that same feeling for people here in San Diego — the way a taste can hold a place and bring it back to you.
Maybe you’re visiting and making memories in our community, and you want something that, months later, takes you right back to a perfect day here. Maybe you’re missing home and you need a reminder of it. Or maybe you live here, like we do, and you’re just making the most of being in America’s Finest City, one meal at a time.
That’s why we named our company after San Diego and branded it close to home. We didn’t set out to be a hot sauce company that happened to be from San Diego. We wanted to be a San Diego company that happens to make hot sauce — rooted here, proud of here, and made to help people taste their way back to the moments that matter here.
Flavor over fire, from the beginning
You’ll see “Flavor Over Fire” on everything we make, and it’s not just a tagline. It’s the test every batch has to pass.
A lot of hot sauce asks you to prove something. Ours asks you to taste something. Heat matters, but it comes after flavor — after the pepper itself, the smoke, the sweetness, the acidity, and the spices have had their say. That’s the difference between a sauce you try once on a dare and a sauce that lives on your table.
Sundays at Solana Beach built this company
We built San Diego Pepper Company from the Solana Beach Farmers Market, and Sundays there are still our home base. That market taught us more than any recipe test could.
Standing behind a table, offering a taste, and watching someone’s face in real time tells you the truth. You learn quickly which sauce people reach for a second time, which one they ask about for fish tacos, and which one they want to take home for someone else. Those conversations shaped our lineup, our labels, and the way we talk about heat — honestly, and in plain language.
Small-batch isn’t a marketing word for us. It’s how we started, and it’s how we still make decisions: taste every run, keep the ingredients clean and recognizable, and don’t scale past the point where we stop being proud of what’s in the bottle.
Four sauces, four stories
Our four core sauces each carry a different part of our story. They’re all sold in 5 oz bottles for $7.49, and they’re designed to be used — not saved for a special occasion.
- San Diego Sauce — our flagship. A mild-medium, smoky chipotle-garlic sauce made with five clean ingredients. This is the one we recommend first: approachable, versatile, and made for eggs, tacos, burgers, and just about everything coming off the grill.
- 805 Heat — sweet heat, done right. A sweet habanero sauce with brown sugar and apple cider vinegar. The sweetness arrives first, then a warm habanero finish. It’s especially good as a glaze and anywhere a dish needs both brightness and heat.
- Indian Spice Sauce — Kieran’s heritage in a bottle. A mild sauce built on Kashmiri chili with cumin, coriander, fenugreek, and cardamom, tied to Kieran’s Punjabi heritage. No other sauce in our lineup tells a more personal story, and it brings warm, aromatic depth to curries, roasted vegetables, grains, and grilled meats.
- Spicy Pupper Sauce — the one with a rescue dog behind it. A vinegar-forward chile de árbol sauce with a portion of every bottle supporting The Animal Pad dog rescue — where we adopted our dog, Pickles. It’s sharp, bright, and made for people who love a classic vinegar bite, with a cause we care about in every pour.
Alongside the core four, we also make Durtyburn chili oils and Hot Honey, and we offer a 4-pack for $26.49 and cases of 12 for stocking up or gifting.
From a market stall to San Diego shelves
What began at a farmers market table is now on shelves in more than 40 retailers across San Diego, including Lazy Acres, Sprouts, Frazier Farms, Bine & Vine, Hot Licks, and El Pepper Loco — and even at San Diego International Airport.
Every new shelf still matters to us, because every one of them started the same way the market did: someone tasted the sauce and decided it belonged there. Growth hasn’t changed the job. It has just given more people a chance to do that first taste closer to home.
Why we still make it this way
We’re still family-owned. We’re still small-batch. And we’re still a San Diego company that happens to make hot sauce — still inspired by that first feeling, when a taste back home took us all the way back to Saint Thomas, and still trying to give you a version of that feeling for San Diego, with sauces that are entirely our own.
If you’re new here, start with San Diego Sauce, then work your way through the lineup and find your own favorite. If you’ve been with us since the market days, thank you — you quite literally built this company, one taste at a time.
Come say hello on a Sunday at the Solana Beach Farmers Market, find us in a store near you, or order online. We’d love to hear what you put it on first.
— Kieran and Jacklyn