Gindo's: Locally Sauced Means Locally Sourced
Plus, a new Evolved Network dinner with soul, and Uptown Farmers Market 2.0
500 Bottles of Sauce on the Wall, 500 Bottles of Sauce…
If I took a poll of Local Food Forum readers, I am sure the vast majority would agree that locally grown produce, picked at the peak of ripeness and used while still fresh, has superior flavor. Mary and Chris Ginder — the married couple who make an amazing variety of hot sauces in their own production facility in the Chicago suburb of St. Charles — strongly agree.
“We are Gindo’s Spice of Life and we make a line of fresh pepper hot sauces, hot honey and spice blends that are all designed to inspire creativity in the kitchen and support local Midwest farms,” Mary said. “So that's first and foremost.” (Gindo is a nickname people bestowed on Chris over the years.)
The Ginders, who will be exhibiting at the Spring One of a Kind Show this weekend (April 28-30) at Chicago’s Merchandise Mart, met and married in California. It was there that Chris, who then was making hot sauces in their kitchen as a hobby, said he had a revelation that led them to start Gindo’s as a company in 2011 and pursue their local sourcing philosophy ever since.
“I had just made a fresh batch of hot sauce using fresh peppers growing our deck,” he said, “And I remember asking Mary, ‘Why don't major hot-sauce companies do what we're doing, like actually shop at farmer's markets and use farm-fresh ingredients to make this product. There's no top-shelf fresh pepper version of this sauce.”
Success in the food business seldom comes without a lot of hard work (as Thomas Edison is quoted as saying, genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration). But a little luck never hurts. The couple worked in restaurants and bars when Gindo’s was a startup and sampled their hot sauces with customers. One of those customers happened to be Michael Voltaggio, a now-famous chef who then had recently won the Top Chef television competition.
Mary said, “He was really excited about the sauce, and once we had it officially bottled, he quickly picked it up and put it in his ink.sack restaurants, and then touted it on Good Morning America and in GQ Magazine as the best thing he discovered that year… Just getting that kind of recognition early on was extremely exciting and helpful.”
The Ginders moved in 2015 to Mary’s home state of Illinois: “When we relocated here, we thought, ‘This is a great opportunity to shift gears and really do the sauce the way we wanted to, which was work directly with local farmers to make everything happen, and not use a co-packer (to manufacture the sauces for them).”
While Chris started creating a new hot sauce every week — Gindo’s has turned out more than 500 varieties to date — he and Mary sold at farmers markets in Batavia and Geneva, which helped them build lasting relationships with growers such as Garlic Breath Farm, Mighty Greens Farm, Sol Gardens, and Rustic Road Farm.
“Some of them are collaborations where we put their logo and our logo on the sauce and use specific ingredients from their farm. Sometimes it's just sourcing peppers and putting them into our mainstream sauces,” Chris explained. They have also done collaborations with local Illinois craft brewers such as Noon Whistle in Lombard and Werk Force in Plainfield, incorporating their beers into hot sauce recipes.
There is often a lot of trial and error involved in creating new products, so I asked how much research and development is involved. Mary replied, “I feel like early on, especially when we relocated back here, I didn't even realize how gifted he is with flavor profiles. It's like an art with the sauces, where he understands what flavors go well together. And so the R&D is very minimal.”
After several years focused on direct-to-consumer sales, the Ginders are working to take the next step up to wholesale, working with Norman Distribution and getting shelf placement in 52 stores so far in the crowded and competitive hot sauce category. And their goals for the company are pretty hot and saucy too.
“The main thing is we want to be big here in Illinois. We want to be the hot sauce that people come to seek out in Illinois,” Chris said, adding, “Our goal is to be the number one go-to sauce in the Chicagoland area.”
Luella’s is Next Stop for Evolved Network Dinners
The Evolved Network non-profit started holding first-class fundraising dinners last fall, and this event series — which raises money for founder Sebastian White’s vision of helping underprivileged youths through a farm-to-table food experience — has quickly become a fixture on Chicago’s culinary scene.
The next dinner is Wednesday, May 10 at Luella’s Southern Kitchen in Lincoln Square, where Sebastian, a clinical psychologist and rising chef, will team with Darnell Reed, Luella’s chef-owner, to create fresh takes on traditional Southern cooking classics.
Examples from the menu for the dinner (in the graphic above), including dirty rice arancini, created by Sebastian; fried chicken and dumpling with smoked gravy (created by Darnell); and grits with lobster and andouille albondigas (a collaboration by the two).
The dinner, which takes place four days before Mother’s Day, is billed as a chance to show love to moms everywhere. The restaurant is named for Luella Funches, Darnell’s great-grandmother, who established the family’s presence in Chicago when she moved here from Mississippi in 1943.
As Local Food Forum has reported, Sebastian is currently providing food and cooking lessons in several Chicago schools while he raises money to achieve The Evolved Network’s ultimate goals: to build out a restaurant and urban food garden to provide students with restaurant, farming and business training, while providing therapeutic services for those who need them.
That’s reason alone to attend at least one of The Evolved Network’s dinners. The meals, though, which Sebastian prepares with leading Chicago-area chefs such as Darnell, Sarah Stegner of Prairie Grass Cafe, Paul Kahan of Dove’s Luncheonette and the One Off Hospitality Group, Devon Quinn of Eden and Tigist Reda of Demera Ethiopian Restaurant, are always outstanding (and filling!).
Click the button below to get your tickets for the May 10 dinner.
Uptown Market 2.0 Opens Next Wednesday
Yesterday Local Food Forum broke the news of The Farmer at the Green, the brand-new farmers market opening Tuesday in downtown Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood. Today, a reminder that next Wednesday brings in another new market.
Well, sort of new. Let’s call it Uptown Farmers Market 2.0.
This version of the Uptown market is produced, like the original, by Chicago Market, the food co-op that is under development in the historic Gerber Building at the corner of Broadway and Wilson Ave. But it’s located in Sunnyside (pedestrian) Mall on Sunnyside Ave. between Beacon St. and Magnolia Ave.
The new market, which will have lots of open air and trees, will provide a more ambient shopping experience than the original site, the parking lot of the future Chicago Market co-op, which was underneath the Red Line L tracks. The move was necessitated by the onset of construction at the store, which is targeted to open early next year.
One additional advantage to the move is that there will be room for a number of new vendors. Click the button below to learn more about the market and see the current vendor lineup.
The market will be open every Wednesday beginning May 3 from 2:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.