Small Axe Peppers facts for kids

Small Axe Peppers is a company from New York City that makes yummy hot sauce. What makes them special? They buy the peppers for their sauces from community gardens! These gardens are often in cities and help people grow fresh food. The company was started in 2014 by John A. Crotty, Chef King Phojanakong, and Daniel Fitzgerald.

How Small Axe Peppers Helps Gardens

Small Axe Peppers started in 2014. Their main goal was to help community gardens in cities. They worked with groups like GrowNYC and the Bronx Green-Up program of the New York Botanical Garden.

Each year, Small Axe Peppers gives thousands of serrano pepper plants to over 40 community gardens. Many of these gardens are in a part of New York City called the Bronx.

GrowNYC helps give out these pepper plants to gardens and urban farms every spring. When the peppers are fully grown, Small Axe Peppers buys them. These peppers are the most important part of their hot sauce!

Growing Peppers for Hot Sauce

In 2014, Small Axe Peppers gave 3,500 serrano pepper plants to GrowNYC. These plants went to gardens all over the Bronx. Lehman College also grew peppers for the company that year.

That first year, 150 pounds of serrano peppers were bought from Bronx gardens. These gardens included Morning Glory Community Garden and Kelly Street Garden. Small Axe Peppers then made 5,000 bottles of hot sauce.

The next year, in 2015, the company collected 750 pounds of peppers. This allowed them to make 30,000 bottles of their "Bronx Hot Sauce."

By 2016, the Bronx community gardens grew 1,500 pounds of serrano peppers. This big harvest helped Small Axe Peppers make 70,000 bottles of hot sauce! That was a huge jump from their first year.

In 2018, Small Axe Peppers bought 1,500 pounds of peppers from 30 gardens in the Bronx. The following year, in 2019, they gave 1,800 new pepper plants to these community gardens.

As of 2020, Small Axe Peppers had grown even bigger! They were buying peppers from community gardens in many other cities. These cities included Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland, Seattle, and Los Angeles.

Awards and Recognition

In 2017, Small Axe Peppers won a special prize called the Good Food Award for their Bronx Hot Sauce.

The Bronx Hot Sauce was also featured on a popular YouTube show called Hot Ones. On the show, people eat very spicy hot sauces. The host, Sean Evans, tried the Bronx Hot Sauce in season 5. He said it might be "the tastiest sauce we’ve ever had on this show." Later, in season 10, their Chicago Hot Sauce was also featured.