With a focus on small businesses and entrepreneurs from around Greater Philadelphia, "The Creators" is a weekly feature presented as a part of PHL Inno. Check back each Monday for a new story on a local business. Have a story you think we should know about? Email associate editor Lisa Dukart at ldukart@bizjournals.com.
It all started with a bushel of habanero peppers.
Tom Hewell and Ted Ebert had both recently graduated — Hewell from the University of Pittsburgh, Ebert from Indiana University of Pennsylvania — and returned east, sharing an apartment with friends in Manayunk. They quickly developed a friendship of their own, bonding over a shared passion for cooking. “We were foodies,” Hewell said.
When they received those habanero peppers from a family friend’s farm, they weren’t quite sure what to do with them. So naturally they experimented, seeking ways to preserve the produce. Hewell blanched them in balsamic and stored them in mason jars in the refrigerator. Later, Ebert dried them with garlic for an added pop of flavor.
The concoction was an unexpected blend that they were soon adding to pizza, pasta and even eggs. Seeing it in the pantry day in and day out, a thought occurred to them: Why not try marketing it?
Encouraged by friends and family, they decided to give it a shot.
When Hewell was laid off from his building job, he dedicated the time to getting the business off the ground.
“We know what would taste nice and what would work well on food, but we didn't know how to get to that point,” Hewell recalled. Not quite sure where to start, they made phone calls to spice companies around the region, hoping one would show interest. But none did – at least at first.
A month or so later, a Long Island, New York, company got back to them and Hewell and Ebert made their pitch. Their excitement quickly faded when the small distribution company told them their product was good but they were approaching the process all wrong. “You can't soak your peppers in balsamic, you can't store them in mason jars, you can't do all this stuff,” Hewell recalled the executive telling them. That same executive, however, offered some advice: Create a shelf-stable version using dry ingredients.
“Over the next three years, that's what we did,” Hewell said. It took them 11 recipes before they landed on their Habanero Table Spice #11 and they officially launched Saint Lucifer Foods LLC in 2011.
It would take an additional two years before they ramped up retail. In 2015, Saint Lucifer landed its first big retail account with Wegmans and has since expanded to other large grocers. Hewell and Ebert also expanded the line to other spices, single-serve packets, and even oils and vinegars, harkening back to their early recipes.
Now, a decade after launching, the company has hit its stride. Thanks to e-commerce, Saint Lucifer is shipping to customers across the globe.
While neither Hewell nor Ebert currently work full-time at Saint Lucifer – Hewell is self-employed in rental and property management, as well as building, while Ebert works in the pharmaceutical industry – they hope one day it will become their full-time focus.
For now, they’re meeting their goal of selling about 900 units a month. Even with some setbacks experienced during the pandemic, Hewell said business continues to grow about 50% year over year. “We haven't had a decline in any of our years,” he said.
While they declined to share the company's valuation, Ebert said they hope to generate revenue of $2 million to $3 million in the next two to three years through strategic partnerships, expanding grocery retail accounts and online sales. “We have also seen an uptick in requests for custom spice blends and ‘private label’ options,” Ebert said.
Wherever the next few years takes them, they plan to stay true to their local roots and hope to see Saint Lucifer spices on the table at restaurants across the region.
How would you describe the habanero spice?
TH: When you shake our spice on any food, you're going to taste the food first, which is why we've been accepted into the culinary world, in restaurants and bars and event centers. … It's a heat, but it's a warming heat. And it's whatever your desired heat can be. Ours being granular, you can shake it, and it's just going to barely touch the surface.
How have you expanded the line?
TH: We didn't want to introduce another spice until there was another spice that we felt confident about. That’s when we started to partner with Drexel Food Lab. Then we produced the Jalapeño Table Spice #13, Seafood Bay Spice, and the Saint Lucifer Bloody Perfect spice with them. Then we partnered with an importer of oil and vinegars, getting back to our balsamic infused peppers. … We were able to produce a balsamic from Italy. And then we produce the habanero oil. From there we produced two more oils, a jalapeño and a calibrea. And we're in the works of producing new spices.
Saint Lucifer is available at a number of big retailers like Acme, Shop Rite and Wegmans. How did you land those deals?
TE: We did what we thought we had to do, which is just dropping off samples. Typically, you hire a broker. We just kind of nixed that and found the buyers ourselves, developing relationships. Our first big account was Wegmans. I was dropping off shaker bottles to Wegmans, they were using it in the back during lunch, the manager saw me one day wearing my Saint Lucifer T-shirt, and that's how that relationship blossomed. It was all just knocking on doors.
In what ways has e-commerce shifted your business model?
TH: It's completely switched from retail being 60% to 70% of our business to almost opposite now – 60% probably online to 40% in retail. Everybody is just drawn to [e-commerce].
TE: Our goal is always to sell about 150 cases a month, whether that be through online channels like Amazon and our website store, which we really want to be our No. 1 vehicle to drive sales – it's just the best margins. The Amazon store allows us to be nationwide and that's where everybody's going towards anyway. … That's going to be really our focus moving forward.
What’s next for Saint Lucifer?
TH: We're working into more [retail] stores which we're really excited about … and getting golf courses for our Bloody Perfect product, which is a single-serve Bloody Mary mix that goes right into your tomato juice, add vodka and you're done. … Single-serve packets are going to be another part of our business that we're really starting to get into — private labeling, co-packing for others that may want their own spice blends. We have many different forks in the fire.
