What’s old is apparently new again. This article floated across our desk, and we couldn’t help but put it out there for our readers to see. It dates back to about this time of year back in 2001, when the hot sauce obsession reached the pages of Newsweek magazine. Check out this article, as it mentions a number of sauce makers we all know and like, perhaps even some which may no longer be in business…but certainly first and foremost is in the one and only John Hard:

American Beat: Tune In, Drop Out, Make Sauce

Our Columnist Explores America’s Ongoing Obsession With Hot Sauce
By Gersh Kuntzman | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jul 16, 2001

One of the great things about this country is that if you’re tired of your mundane 9-to-5 existence, you can always quit your job and start making hot sauce. This little bit of insight into America’s vast entrepreneurial possibilities comes courtesy of John Hard, a man wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt with chili peppers all over it.

I ran into hard-and a dozen hot-sauce makers like him-at last week’s International Fancy Food and Confection Show, an annual trade fair for specialty-food makers, the customers who love them and the journalists who love free samples.

Hard may not be everyone’s embodiment of the American Dream (after all, how many of us would wear a shirt like that?), but he should be. A few years ago, he grew sick of the daily grind of running a company that designs systems to put out fires in office buildings and gave it all up to indulge his passion: starting fires in people’s mouths.

His Ohio-based company, CaJohn’s Fiery Foods, now offers more than 70 hot products. “We’ve expanded 250 percent in both of the last two years and we’re on pace to do the same [this year],” Hard said.

Click here to read the rest of the source article from Newsweek