Tim Halada and Austin Weber bonded over hot sauce during lunch breaks when they were coworkers at The American Club in Kohler.
“We both love hot sauce,” Halada says.
They also both grew up cooking and liked to work in the kitchen. They started pickling and making marinara together as a hobby in 2018.
After a while, they realized many of the sauces they purchased were all about the heat and not about the flavor. Halada knew his grandmother had a great sauce recipe and convinced her to share it.
Friends, family and coworkers started to ask for their sauces, and the pair realized they had to start charging for it. When they were furloughed during the COVID-19 pandemic, Halada and Weber decided to try selling sauces at farmers markets, where they found an avid audience.
The success led to the formation of Midwest Pepper Heads LLC in 2021.
The two both have family members who can offer advice about running a small business, and Weber’s mother often helps in the kitchen. Close ties in the community have helped in other ways too, including a relationship with local artist Rachel Knuth, who designs their labels featuring mascot Papi Pepper.
“I would say our biggest connection or partnership was when we connected with 3 Sheeps [Brewing Company],” Weber says.
Halada adds, “I wanted to make a Wisconsin hot sauce — it’s got to have garlic, it’s got to have mustard, it’s got to have horseradish and it’s got to have beer.”
The sauce took 10 months to develop. Halada and Weber made samples using 3 Sheeps beer as the featured ingredient and presented them to brewery founder Grant Pauly. Before he even tasted the samples, Pauly told them he had some of their sauces in his fridge.
The result was the award-winning Mean Mister’s Beer Mustard Hot Sauce, which won a Screaming Mimi award at the 2023 New York City Hot Sauce Expo. Midwest Pepper Heads has made three sauces featuring 3 Sheeps beer, with plans for more in the works.
As the business has evolved, Weber’s interest in marketing has grown while Halada remains passionate about product development.
They still retail at farmers markets and festivals as well as online, but they also sell wholesale to some small stores in Oshkosh, Ripon, Green Lake, Cudahy and Brandon.
“We started pretty small and then aggressively grew. We took pretty much everything we made and put it right back in,” Weber says.
Halada and Weber rent a commercial-grade kitchen in a Sheboygan church basement and say there is plenty of capacity for the immediate future. The business has even been able to do some cold packing for other operations.
“We don’t want to grow too big too fast,” Halada says. “It’s definitely fun.”
Weber adds: “We enjoy being our own bosses.”
