Why Morris Bart got into the hot sauce game
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Morris Bart's Louisiana Hot Sauce offers a balanced heat. Photo: Carlie Kollath Wells/Axios
You can't drive to the grocery store in New Orleans without seeing Morris Bart and now, you'll probably see him on the shelves inside, too.
Zoom in: The personal injury lawyer, whose face appears on billboards across the Gulf Coast, has bottled a hot sauce that's now available in Rouses Markets.
Catch up quick: As his billboards, commercials and catch phrase make clear, Bart's no stranger to self-promotion.
- For awhile, he said, he's handed out hot sauces as freebies for clients. It's an easy way to make sure his brand stays top of mind for at least as long as the sauce sticks around on the dinner table.
Yes, but: Bart didn't really love any of the options available to him on the open market.
- "I had always been searching for a particular flavor profile that I liked, but I could never get," he says.
- Eventually, he gave up trying and worked with a food scientist to just make a custom blend.
- "I started bottling it and giving it away to my clients, and they just went wild," he says. "I was having 10 or 15 clients a day show up to the office just to get a bottle of sauce."
He figured he was on to something, so earlier this year, Bart spun up a company just for the sauce.
- Bart found a home for the product in Rouses Markets earlier this spring.
- In just the past month, he says, the supermarket chain has sold about 2,000 bottles. "It's one of the hottest items in Rouses," he says.
What they're saying: About 30 New Orleans-area restaurants have the sauce, too.
- Chef Alon Shaya says he's a really big fan and keeps it stocked at Safta's Table. "I really like it," he says, for its "very balanced flavor, texture and heat."
Between the lines: Still, Bart makes clear that he's not quitting his day job anytime soon — "I can assure you of that," he says — and he's committed to donating all hot sauce profits to food insecurity nonprofits.
- This year, he'll make a donation to Second Harvest.
The intrigue: Bart realizes the whole thing is a touch ridiculous, but it's hard to argue with the success.
- The typical story, he says, is that people buy the sauce as a joke and then realize later how much they actually enjoy it.
- "It's kind of a two-step process," he says. "First, it's the novelty of it. And then, second, it's realizing it's damn good sauce."