Madeline Baché is the latest local entrepreneur to take the reality show leap to get her business in front of more potential partners.
Baché is founder of Sauce Boxx, a monthly subscription box of sauces, flavored butters and marinades that subscribers can add to recipes. The Camas-based company launched in 2020, has 300 subscribers and ships to seven states.
Baché was a contestant in season two of the online accelerator and competition show The Blox, which featured 20 startups living in a Kansas City house for a week while undergoing an intense startup bootcamp. All the episodes dropped this week.
The show airs on The Blox app, which is available in the Apple and Google app stores. The show, described by Kansas City’s Startland News as “Shark Tank meets Top Chef,” was created by veteran reality TV personality Weston Bergmann. Bergmann was a cast member on Real World Austin and several other MTV shows.
In addition to the accelerator element there is competition based on what was learned each night.
“I was there for a week (in 2021). It’s an intense week of filming and learning. I felt like I was drinking out of a firehose,” Baché said. “We learned how to begin (a company) and roll out and implement and grow. It was college for startups.”
Baché knew she might not get in front of her target customers: busy parents who still want to create healthy and exciting meals. She could, though, get in front of potential partners to help in her journey.
“The show is for people interested in business or startups,” she said. “I wanted to meet others and expand the territory of the influence of people to grow my business. I have been mom-hustling my ass off to grow this company.”
Baché is a foodie. But, she noticed as her family grew — she has four kids — her cooking became “less glamorous."
“I was eating chicken and rice one day with an incredible sauce and I thought imagine the possibilities if you had fresh sauces,” all the time, she recalls. “I said, they, as in someone else, should come up with a fresh sauce company and you could do dinner so many different ways.”
By 2020 and sitting at home in quarantine for the Covid-19 pandemic, Baché realized she was the “they” she had been waiting for.
She started the business cooking out of a commercial kitchen she found at a Vancouver church and delivered the first 50 boxes out of her own car.
She still uses that commercial kitchen but she has started using professional cold shipping, since the products do not include preservatives. She has a fullt-ime team of four, including two chefs who joined her after they were laid off from restaurants during the pandemic.
Consumers can personalize products in the monthly box. Customers average about three sauces per box, on a minimum $35 order.
Before launching the business Baché and her husband were real estate investors flipping houses. Prior to that she owned a restaurant in the Lloyd Center food court and then a food truck in Vancouver.
The business is self funded. Baché and her husband sold their house at the height of the market, eventually taking the equity and plowing it into the business. The family now lives in an RV.
The tiny RV kitchen has been a good testing ground for products so she knows it will work for consumers.
“I’ve completely cut out chopping onions and garlic,” she joked, adding she instead relies on the sauces and marinades.
Baché is in the current cohort of the peer accelerator StarveUps. She is gearing up to launch a line of spices as well as one-off celebration boxes that can be used for specific meals. Baché is also getting product into wholesale with restaurants and caterers.
She expects to start talking to investors soon to fund the expansions.
