Tricks of the Spice Trade: Uncle Brutha's Hot Sauce

| Print Post This | Like (1) | Comments (0)

THE DAY SOMEONE introduced Brennan Proctor as "the pepper-sauce guy," he started to see his culinary tinkering in a different light.

Proctor, a fourth-generation D.C. native, was working in Los Angeles in late 2001 as a sound technician on music videos. He had always been drawn to music — growing up, he became proficient in the violin, trombone, tuba and electric bass — and in L.A., he was working with some of the industry's biggest names, such as Jay-Z and Janet Jackson.

But on the back burner, his home-brewed hot sauce had also begun to bubble. What started as an initial flirtation with flavors to dress a batch of potluck wings in the late 1980s had sparked years of playing with fire: tasting chiles and spices and various combinations of them, striving for a sauce that carefully calibrated the balance of heat and flavor.

By the time he was living in L.A., the responses were only encouraging. After he brought the wings to a co-worker's baby shower, Proctor's boss had the sauce bottled and given to clients for Christmas. A batch of the stuff, he says, became almost a prerequisite for showing up at parties — and work.

"It's not too often that a sound-man is coming on set and executive producers are calling out your first name: 'Hey, it's Brennan. Where's your sauce?'"

Still, he was taken aback when a producer introduced him to someone on the street as "the pepper-sauce guy." Shortly after, budgets for music videos began to slide, Proctor says, and the lapses between his workdays were widening. Suddenly, a future in condiment cuisine seemed not so far-fetched.

In 2003, he sold his house in L.A. and returned to the District with the seed money to launch Uncle Brutha's brand hot sauce. (Proctor and his sister have always referred to each other as "brother" and "sister," so when she had a baby, Proctor declared, "I guess now I'm Uncle Brutha.")

Today, Uncle Brutha's No. 9 sauce (a green combo of serrano chiles, garlic, ginger, cilantro and onion) and No. 10 (a red mélange of four chiles and garlic) can be found in metro-area grocery stores and retail shops, and in restaurant kitchens and on their tables. Together, they've claimed 31 awards so far. But success has been a seesaw, especially recently.

Despite no formal cooking education, Proctor, 46, has always felt at home in the kitchen — as a kid, he chose to read a cookbook for a school reading program. And although he had completed a certificate program in music-industry business from University of California, Los Angeles, little if any of that know-how was transferable to running a small food business.

To compensate, he sought consultations and attended seminars through Small Business Development Center Networks in the District and Maryland; he networked with other business owners; and he pounded the pavement, pitching his wares to stores and restaurants.

"Got a lot of doors shut in my face, too. It was a little discouraging at first," he says, "because it was hard to crack that nut."

Proctor was gently rebuffed in his first attempt with Whole Foods, but he got his sauces onto the shelves at the Takoma Park Silver Spring Co-op and won a spot among the street vendors at Eastern Market.

With those successes in hand, he made another pitch to Whole Foods, which in 2005 approved the brand to be sold in local stores and, later, stores across the mid-Atlantic region, he says. The next year, Proctor moved from the street market to a nearby storefront, a spice mecca he called Uncle Brutha's Gourmet Foods and Hot Sauce Emporium.

But the spring of 2007 brought the three-alarm blaze at Eastern Market. A drop in foot traffic from people outside the neighborhood, he says, drove down his sales by at least one-third. And "there's only so much hot sauce people in the immediate area can buy on a weekly, a monthly basis," he says.

When his lease ran out in summer 2008, Proctor had to relocate again, this time to his home in Northwest D.C., where he now runs the business full time.

"It's been tough," he says. "I don't know how many people don't have cable [TV] these days, but Uncle Brutha doesn't."

"I invested everything into this," he says. "I wasn't just going to walk away from it."

The operation now is something of a one-man show, with help from his family and especially his 74-year-old mother. ("That's my right-hand man," he says.) For Proctor, the days are a flurry of answering phones and e-mails, dropping off shipments of sauce, networking — which recently led to pro-bono technical help with his Web site — and stirring up new business while making sure his capacity to handle it grows at the same pace.

When asked how many hours a week he works, Proctor answers: "Most of 'em."

But Proctor thinks that the scales are once again tipping in his favor. He successfully lobbied Giant Food, and now, he says, roughly two dozen Giant stores in the area have been approved to carry his brand.

And there are future plans on the drawing board: He's keeping a wishful eye out for commercial real estate to re-establish his store and is also exploring ideas for moving the production and bottling of the sauces to the D.C. area. (Currently, a plant in Pennsylvania handles that so Proctor can avoid the costs of building and maintaining his own commercial-grade kitchen.)

If he's able to do all that and continue to grow, his ultimate hope is that Uncle Brutha's will create a few jobs, perhaps make use of local produce, and benefit the community.

And even if that doesn't happen, Uncle Brutha assures us that "it's been worth it."

Written by Express contributor Danny Freedman
Photos by Fris Tripplaar for Express