"I'm not really sleeping anymore," Spicy Honey creator and Mixed Made co-founder Casey Elsass says laughing as he pours himself another glass of water. "But honestly, I'd rather be stressed that it's doing well, rather than the other way around." After all, it has found quite the market, seeing as how only one other company, Mike's Hot Honey peddles the same product.
2014 was a big year for hot honey. An intriguing condiment dubbed "the new Sriracha," it's the latest artisanal "it" food being drizzled atop many a cheeseboard, spicy sausage pizza and ice cream sundae. Already available for purchase from a few gourmet online retailers, it's also been vetted for distribution by local Whole Foods locations and will be featured on several upcoming NYC menus. All quite the (sugar) rush for a product that didn't even exist until a few years ago.
However, the creation myth of Bees Knees is even sweeter than their current success. Elsass and his business partner, Morgen Newman, first came up with (what is quite literally) Brooklyn's hottest new condiment last January in his cozy Bushwick kitchen.
(Scott Heins/Gothamist)
Highly addictive and just as versatile, the Scoville-scaled condiment comes in tasteful, minimalist packaging; all black twist top, clean sans-serifs and a single decorative chili suspended in 8 ounces of translucent, amber honey. From idea to execution, it's a very sexy product, and obviously I'm not the only one who sees its appeal.
However, with all the hype, some growing pains are expected. In the past 14 months since its launch, demand has skyrocketed, and what was once an occasional trip to the Hudson Valley for a few buckets of raw honey, soon became a weekly ritual for Elsass as word got out and orders started to pour in from different cities, states and continents.
(Scott Heins/Gothamist)
"Surprisingly, we've even had enormous international demand," he says, listing off several European countries, as well as retailers from Libya and Egypt. "It's a little crazy...When those come in I'm always like, 'How did you find out about us?'"
The result of a 30-day start-up business experiment, it was an idea formed over a bottle of whiskey and a delivery pizza early last year. Curious about whether it was actually possible to create a fully-fledged business within a set month, the duo decided to try it out with something familiar: the hot sauce Elsass was already making. "But we thought, 'What could be a twist?'" he wears a mischievous wink. "So we just took another ingredient and made it spicy."
(Scott Heins/Gothamist)
