Hot stuff: A pair of pickled pepper promoters are on a roll

Hot stuff: A pair of pickled pepper promoters are on a roll
By Dan Hilborn, Burnaby NOW assistant editor
Published Aug. 25, 2002


What started out as a simple dare among friends is turning into one of the hottest business ideas to come out of Burnaby in years.
It all began back in 1999, when a group of guys calling themselves The Average Joes got together for a whitewater rafting trip on the Similkameen River.
When the harrowing ride was over, one of the guys, Mike Prokopich, pulled out a surprise - a jar of spicy pickled beans - and he challenged his buddies to see who could eat them.
With the help of a little liquid courage, the red hot challenge was met and a tradition was born ... at least until their supply of spicy beans ran out.
That's when another of the Joes, Mike Brown, came up with an even better idea - making the spicy pickled beans himself.
"I said to myself, 'The next time we get together, I'm going to surprise the guys with some homemade beans of my own,'" said the man, who turned to his grandmother's no-sodium recipe for inspiration.
For two years, the ersatz recipe creator slowly toiled away on the project, talking to friends and neighbours about the intricacies of pickling and canning, experimenting with different spices and herbs, and finally putting together the finished product - 10 jars of his own hot, pickled beans.
When The Average Joes got together for a friendly round of golf last October, Mike B. pulled out his homemade beans and that's when history was born.
"We tried them and loved them," said Mike Prokopich, the future business partner.
That night, the two Mikes went on the Internet to research the viability of their business idea.
And that's when they realized their predilection for peppers could possibly become a proper profession.
"That night we drew the logo and secured the name of our Web site," said Mike Brown, who knew his previous experience as a salesperson for bottled water would be one of his most valuable assets as a promoter of pickled peppers.
Their next step was to meet all the necessary business requirements. They took food safety courses and rented the certified kitchen of the White Rock Elks Hall as the place to make their new taste creations.
Then came the final, most decisive step - selling their product on the open market.
That first weekend, they sold a total of 60 jars of their spicy beans at craft fairs in Fort Langley and Fantasy Gardens.
"It was a hit," said Mike Brown. "We knew at that point we were onto something."
So with the kitchen in full swing, and 500 cases of spicy beans and asparagus piling up in basement of a supportive uncle, the two Mikes quit their day jobs and devoted their full-time efforts toward making the business venture work.
"We made a commitment to draw up a business plan and we had to hit the numbers."
Using old business connections, the duo sold their first box of beans to Fanny's Bistro in Langley. After that they soon found themselves on the shelves of almost every specialty meat shop and food store in the Lower Mainland.
Today, they supply spicy beans to a long list of restaurants, pubs, bars, meat shops and delis. In addition to the spicy beans, each jar comes with two hot serrano peppers so pepper lovers can truly enjoy the heat of the moment.
On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the hottest, they consider their beans to measure around a 4. And they 're hoping to branch out into other spicy foods.
Over the coming months, Fire Breathin Gourmet Foods - www.firebreathin.com - hopes to add spicy pearl onions and jars of habanero peppers to the roster. "Habaneros are the hottest pepper in the world. We're going to call them colon bombs," said Brown.
Today their business is scattered around the Lower Mainland, with the kitchen in White Rock, warehouse in Coquitlam and formal business offices set up in an uncle's basement in Burnaby.
And if things keep growing at the torrid pace of the past three months, the two Mikes believe they could have their own building by the end of the year.
And as for their product, they've already shipped their first box to Ontario, and one of their first customers has already shipped samples to Fiji.