Locally owned Shady Lady Hot Sauce will make your taste buds tingle

Aug 13, 2023

City Reporter

Shady Lady Hot Sauce, a hot sauce company based in Orcutt and created by Stacy Barber and Chad Miller, grew out of an overload of peppers and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The couple, who is engaged, started producing the hot sauce from their home garden in 2020 and became a limited liability company in 2021.

Miller had been laid off and Barber was deemed a non-essential employee. “She always wanted a big garden so I made some planter beds and we grew way too many peppers,” quipped Miller.

“I’ve always made sauces, so without having to go to work you can watch YouTube and learn how to make different types of sauces and different ways to make it,” said Miller, a Righetti graduate. “So through just experimenting and mixing things up, we got some bottles and just started giving out to family and friends. Then when we came up with this recipe that we have out, everyone was like, 'dude, you gotta sell that.'”

Barber points out that the woman on the hot sauce label is sitting on a Fresno chili because that is the main pepper featured in their sauce. For future sauces they plan to have the woman sitting on the signature pepper of each individual hot sauce.

Pineapple and carrots lend a unique flavor to their hot sauce, Miller said. The ingredients make "it stand out" from the various mango habanero blends, he said, because the pineapple sweetens it up a little bit, and the carrot gives it an earthy flavor.

“We do focus on the fact that this is a healthy product because there is no salt, no sugar, no calories, no sodium,” said Miller. “It’s all natural, like we have some bodybuilders that eat it because when they’re trying to cut weight and eat just rice cakes, they can put hot sauce on it.”

Barber said they started their garden with free pallets and sheet metal from around town, and a truckload of soil from a local company. The result led to eating a lot of jalapeno poppers, according to Barber, 20 plants of various chili peppers in their home garden, and a lot of potential.

“Originally we got a bunch of organic peppers and took the seeds out of them, and my sister also gave me some seeds, she lives in Guam,” said Barber. “So we started everything from seed. I had always gotten plants from Home Depot, I never really thought to start something from seed.”

Barber gives credit to Old Town Market for allowing them to move from selling their hot sauce to neighbors and close friends to developing an official bottle. After the interest from Old Town Market in carrying the sauce in the store, the couple got to work on making the sauce official and legal to sell in California.

It is now available on local store shelves including Melody Market, Smooth Criminal, Oak Knolls Hardware and Old Town Market. Co-packer for the hot sauce is Smith’s House Manufacturing, a cannery based in Nipomo and creators of Monkey Spit Hot Sauce.

For now they're producing only one hot sauce flavor, but Barber and Miller have already “nailed a couple recipes” and after they “raise the capital,” they plan to invest more into the business and will feature new sauces such as a cayenne pepper sauce or a Carolina Reaper sauce.

To purchase online visit https://shadyladysauce.wpcomstaging.com. For local delivery call (805) 279-6618.

April Chavez is the Santa Maria City Reporter for the Santa Maria Times. If you have information, or a story idea that you would like to share, send her an email at [email protected].

City Reporter