A New Foodservice and Retail Favorite
A pizzeria in Brazil was the unlikely inspiration for this chili pepper-infused honey, which recently won the Front Burner Foodservice Pitch Competition at the Summer Fancy Food Show.
The founder of Mike’s Hot Honey admits he’s “more of a pizza guy than a honey guy,” but that turned out to be one of the key ingredients to his success in the honey business.
Mike Kurtz actually stumbled upon the idea for chili pepper-infused honey at a pizzeria, in Brazil, but it was years later, at another pizzeria—this time in Brooklyn, N.Y. where he was working—that he launched Mike’s Hot Honey.
The versatile condiment, made using Brazilian chili peppers and wildflower honey from upstate New York, has been gaining traction among consumers, chefs, and mixologists throughout the country. A few months ago, it even won the Front Burner Foodservice Pitch Competition at the Specialty Food Association’s Summer Fancy Food Show.
People tasting the product experience the sweetness of the honey first, Kurtz says, followed by the spicy kick on the back of the palate from the chili peppers.
It All Started with a Hike
In 2003, Kurtz and some friends were traveling and, after a hiking trip, landed in a small town in Brazil, looking for something to eat. “There was a pizzeria with jars of honey that had chili peppers sitting in them for drizzling on top of the pizzas,” he says. “When I tasted the combination of the chili-infused honey drizzled over pizza, I was blown away.”
After returning home from his travels in 2004, Kurtz began making chili pepper-infused honey for his own personal consumption. In the summer of 2010, Kurtz found himself working at a music industry booking agency during the day, and at Paulie Gee’s pizzeria in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, at night. He was still making his hot honey on the side and brought some in for restaurant owner Paulie Giannone to try. The pizza baron liked it so much, he made it a featured ingredient on the restaurant’s Hellboy pizza.
Meanwhile, Kurtz had decided to follow his heart and become a full-time pizza cook at the restaurant. “I loved making pizzas,” he says. “We call the kitchen the ‘pizza theater’ at Paulie Gee’s. It’s open to the floor of the restaurant, so when you’re making pizzas you’re able to interact with the guests, and I just loved it. I loved it a lot more than my music industry day job.”
Customers were soon raving about the honey they tasted on the pizza and began asking where they could buy it, so Kurtz started selling it in plastic containers at the restaurant. Soon, there were so many customers asking for it that he decided to begin actually bottling it in 2010.
He recruited his best childhood friend, who had become a graphic designer, to design the label, setting the stage for the expansion of Mike’s Hot Honey into retail. The product took off as local customers—and local retailers—saw it as a “hometown condiment,” Kurtz says.
Specialty purveyors such as The Brooklyn Kitchen, Bedford Cheese Shop, and Murray’s Cheese began carrying the product, and Kurtz found himself driving around making deliveries at night after making fresh batches in the kitchen of Paulie Gee’s—and after his shift making pizzas, which he still does occasionally.
“I was a one-man operation for the first four years,” he says.
Scaling Up the Business
One of the first challenges Kurtz had to overcome was finding a way to have the product bottled. He quickly learned that typical sauce manufacturers didn’t necessarily have the right equipment to bottle honey, and honey bottlers didn’t want to risk cross-contamination with the peppers.
He finally worked with his honey supplier, Stiles Honey, one of the largest honey producers in New York, to create a dedicated bottling line at the company’s bottling facility in New Jersey. Together, in 2014, they “MacGyvered” a bottling line that could take over the production of his unique creation, he explains.
“The product didn’t exist before, so there was no equipment designed for it, and there was no blueprint for how to do it,” Kurtz says. “We just had to figure it out, and eventually we did, through a lot of experimenting.”
The new production line “was the key to unlocking a lot of opportunity,” he says. “At that point, I had built up enough interest in the product that there was a demand that I couldn’t fulfill.”
The fact that the product had limited availability may have helped give it a boost, he says, by creating an aura of intrigue. “People started hearing about it, but they couldn’t get their hands on it,” says Kurtz.
In 2015, Kurtz took on a business partner, Matt Beaton, whose business acumen and CPG experience at Wrigley Co. have helped Mike’s Hot Honey grow. Beaton and Kurtz had been friends for one year in college at the University of Wisconsin, before Kurtz transferred back home to the University of Massachusetts. On a visit to New York, Beaton and his wife, Erynn, learned about his efforts to grow the Mike’s Hot Honey business. A week later, Beaton offered to quit his corporate job and join Kurtz at Mike’s Hot Honey.
“It was just a really serendipitous thing,” says Kurtz. “He was the exact type of person I needed. And also, Erynn is smarter than both of us—she has a Ph.D. in business, and teaches in the business school at Ohio State. I always tell people that I got a two-for-one deal on my business partner because Erynn is a huge resource for us.”
Beaton is now the CEO of the company, overseeing the business side of the operations, while Kurtz focuses on marketing and driving relationships with chefs and tastemakers. The company, which secured a round of private financing last year, also has added staff in operations, finance, and sales.
After Beaton joined Mike’s Hot Honey, it began partnering with several foodservice and specialty retail distributors, which has helped expand its reach to about 4,000 retail outlets and about 1,000 restaurant locations.
Kurtz says he learned from his experience at Paulie Gee’s that restaurants can help drive demand for the product, which in turn can lead to increased retail sales.
“When we go into new markets now, we look to tackle foodservice first, and grow brand awareness,” says Kurtz. “We know that as a small brand, you can’t really make it on the shelf in the supermarket without brand awareness.”
He always encourages restaurants to mention the company’s brand by name on the menu.
“We do everything we can to get the product as visible as possible in those restaurants,” he says. “It means a lot to consumers when they see a restaurant using a product. They know that it’s high quality —‘If it’s good enough for this restaurant, then it’s good enough for me to use in my own kitchen.’”
Evolving Applications
Chefs have been using the product in a variety of ways, Kurtz says, either as a glaze, finishing sauce, or marinade, or as an ingredient in recipes. At salad chain Chop’t, it’s an ingredient in the Hot Honey Vinaigrette dressing. “We also have great bars using it in cocktails, and restaurants using it on seafood or roasted vegetables or salads,” he says.
It’s also featured in the new Hot Brooklyn Summer flavor ice cream at Brooklyn-based Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream. The limited-edition flavor includes Mike’s Hot Honey caramel sauce, Masienda corn cake pieces and house-made mulberry jam swirled and folded in sweet cream ice cream.
Mike’s Hot Honey has also joined the craft cocktail craze. The product is being mixed into cocktails at several bars and restaurants, including Dan Barber’s Blue Hill Farm in New York, among others.
The company is continuing to expand in both foodservice and retail, and even in meal kits, but Kurtz says he has not sought to branch out into new product lines. The focus has been on offering the same chili-infused honey product in a variety of package sizes for both foodservice and retail.
“We feel like there’s a lot of room to grow, just with the original product,” says Kurtz. “There’s still the vast majority of the country that hasn’t tasted our product.”
HIGHLIGHTS
— 2003 Mike Kurtz tastes
chili pepper honey
on a pizza in Brazil.
— 2004
Begins making chili pepper infused honey at home as a hobby.
— 2010 Gets a job working as a pizza apprentice at Paulie Gee’s, adds Mike’s Hot Honey to
the Hellboy pizza, and
begins selling the condiment to customers.
— 2014
Opens a production line in New Jersey with supplier Stiles Honey.
— 2015
Matt Beaton joins Mike’s Hot Honey as business partner.
— 2017
Mike’s Hot Honey completes first round of financing.
— 2018
Wins Front Burner Foodservice Pitch Competition at the Specialty Food Association’s Summer Fancy Food Show.
Mike Kurtz
Age: 36
Years in specialty food: 8
Favorite food: A nice bowl of pho.
Least favorite food: Foie gras. What can I say? I’m just not into it.
Last thing I ate and loved: The upside down square slice at Scarr’s Pizza on the Lower East Side here in New York City. He mills his own flour on-site and uses organic tomatoes from California for the sauce. It’s one of my favorite pies anywhere, and I eat a lot of pizza.
If I weren’t in the food business I’d be: trying to write a hit R&B song. I worked in the music business before I got into food and still play/compose music for fun. I think I have some hits in me. Stay tuned ...
One piece of advice I’d give to a new food business: Don’t rush your product to market. Test your product on a small scale. Take the time to listen to consumers and customers and get feedback on your product and packaging before pushing for wider distribution. A slow build will allow you to avoid hasty mistakes and give you the time to establish meaningful relationships that will help your business in the long run.
Mark Hamstra is a regular contributorto Specialty Food Magazine and Specialty Food News.
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