Howell Local Debuts Hot Sauce Inspired By Health Struggles

HOWELL, NJ - In 2017, Howell resident Kevin Carbone was perfecting a hot sauce recipe from his parents’ kitchen. Within just three years, the local has seen celebrities from the likes of Frozen star Kristen Bell to rappers Schoolboy Q and Juice WRLD try the specialty sauce made with only real ingredients.

The idea for what would become Carbone’s signature pineapple and turmeric hot sauce blend - dubbed Sauce Bae - first began as an anti-inflammatory spice blend mix to ease his own health issues.

Carbone, 30, has always been interested in fitness and eating well. While studying at Ramapo College of New Jersey, he was an avid soccer player who enjoyed running and lifting weights. But at the age of 21, the Howell High School graduate began to experience persistent gastrointestinal issues. He was eventually diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease that caused the young athlete to become afflicted with excruciating pain, eventually becoming a self-proclaimed “hermit” inside his room and abandoning all the activities he once enjoyed - including indulging in delicious food with savory spices.

“I was devastated when I found out, I was like, ‘why me?’ Why someone so young, why someone that loves food? I was very social too, so when I got sick, I couldn't go out. I was living in fear to literally go anywhere. I didn't want to see people,” Carbone said.

Although doctors told Carbone that the inflammation was not related to his eating habits, Carbone took it upon himself to experiment with different foods, eliminating processed foods or items with sweeteners and preservatives.

Carbone began managing his disease successfully for years, largely by eating clean and making his own meals at home. It was an idea for a low-sodium, anti-inflammatory hot sauce. But it was only when the analyst-by-day was let go of his job in 2017 that Carbone decided to pursue his entrepreneurial venture full-time.

“'I'm a firm believer in like, like, try not to have a plan B. Because like, then, you know, you get distracted. Like, I don't want a safety net. So I am a big like, risk taker. So like, for me, like, I wasn't nervous. I was like, Alright, sweet,” Carbone said. “I initially had an idea that I wanted to make, I wanted to sell a spice blend that uses turmeric, and I wanted it to be something that was healthy. I spent months working on it: every day after work I tried to make these blends, but it just smelled terrible. And then one day I thought, ‘If I make a sauce, I can change the smell.’ And I don't have to make it seem like the smell could be completely different.”

And thus, Sauce Bae was born.

For a full year, Carbone spent hours in his home kitchen perfecting the recipe “through trial and error,” eventually moving into a commercial kitchen in Spring Lake once the recipe was solidified.

“I’d make 60 to 100 bottles or so a night,” Carbone recalled. “And then I would go to local events to try to sell it. I had friends and family buying, I would go to events to try to do something like taste testing.”

With the help of local establishments such as Stay Gold Cafe and Cammareri’s, Carbone was able to give the public a taste of Sauce Bae, eventually gaining a grassroots following right in Howell. In fact, it was the manager of Stay Gold that pushed the Howell resident to reach out to Heatonist, a boutique hot sauce store in New York City and a nationally recognized e-commerce distributor of sauces.

The month he was to begin living on credit, he received a call from the store.

“They ended up ordering like 14,000 bottles. And that was the moment where I made all the money back that I'd invested in,” Carbone said. “It's not that I had a lot of overhead or anything, but I was living off of my savings for my living expenses for a little bit over a year at that point. I pretty much drained every set. And that was about to be the month that I would have been living on credit. So it worked out in sort of ‘fairy tale time.’”

Carbone credits the overnight success of Sauce Bae in part to the online web series Hot Ones, in which celebrities answer interview questions while sampling hot sauces in varying spice level. Sauce Bae debuted on Hot Ones in 2020, with stars like Trevor Noah and Stone Cold Steve Austin giving the anti-inflammatory blend two thumbs up.

“As soon as the hot sauce is featured on that show for the season, people want it because they want to try the whole lineup,” Carbone said. “Stores wanted it, too. The biggest retailer I got in was Cost Plus World Market, that's 250 of the locations we’re in. And they’re owned by Bed, Bath and Beyond.”

Sauce Bae is currently available at 350 retail locations nationwide, including the Howell GNC, Cost Plus World Market in Shrewsbury and on Amazon. Coming off the tails of a recent ‘Hotter One’ spice blend launch at the end of 2020, Carbone says his next goal is to land in a major grocery chain nationwide. Given that the Howell resident recently landed a deal with wholesaler UNFI, it appears that his goal isn’t too far fetched.

“I think I would like to launch one more flavor potentially, or an ultra hot one. And then my biggest goal is to land in a major grocery store. I think that that is the point where, like, I feel like I made it to the next level,” Carbone said. “But it's a point where like, I can really then start focusing on my mission of teaching wellness. My goal is to genuinely offer something that is truly healthier, that doesn't sacrifice flavor. And I look at this as like the opening for me to get into the food industry so I can make genuinely impactful changes.

“My one takeaway from this is if you just really fight and focus on the good stuff, there's always something you can take away out of a bad thing,” Carbone continued. “My disease, it made me great at managing stress. With some of the stuff I've dealt with, nowadays I don't care about the superficial stuff. Just being healthy is a blessing. I became a very simplistic person and I enjoy the things that I should be enjoying. I want to keep sending that message.”

To learn more about Sauce Bae, visit www.saucebae.com.