Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in food and beverage but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Daniel Fitzgerald, COO of Small Axe Peppers, located in Long Island City, NY, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

We make our hot sauce from peppers grown in community gardens. Each bottle purchased directly supports the gardens and gardeners who grow peppers for these hot sauces. To date, we have sourced 30,000 pounds of peppers from 122 partner gardens in 42 cities across America.

Tell us about yourself

I was a first-grade teacher in a low-income school in New Orleans before I started working with hot sauce. After I left teaching, I had the opportunity to work with a few community gardens and saw firsthand how vital community gardens and urban farms are for their surrounding neighborhood. Many gardens depend on grants or out-of-pocket expenses to fund their operations. But the work they do touches hundreds, if not thousands of lives.

In addition, there is a problem that a lot of the time, the work that these gardeners do is not well-known or understood outside their neighborhoods. So it was very interesting to me to consider growing a value-added product out of these community gardens in order to connect their efforts locally with a customer base in their broader city. We wanted to come up with a product that could connect these urban farms with socially conscious customers in their city. The vessel of a 5-ounce bottle of hot sauce was powerful because it was a value-additive product that was shelf-stable and easily transported out of their neighborhood.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

In 2015, we started working with 5 community gardens that grew 150 pounds of peppers in The Bronx. Now, we have a nationwide sourcing network that has purchased over 29,000 pounds of peppers from 122 gardens in 42 cities across America. This means that we are able to funnel money back into urban farms and community gardens that need it the most.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

You have to make up everything as you go along. There is no blueprint. There is only a series of improvisations, some of which work and others that don't.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

Expect to make mistakes, learn from your mistakes, and don't be so hard on yourself when you make those mistakes again.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://smallaxepeppers.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SmallAxePeppers/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smallaxepeppers/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SmallAxePeppers
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/small-axe-peppers/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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