Hot Drops Sauce is heating up Sonoma County restaurants

A Sonoma County native is spicing up some county-favorite restaurants with his new hot sauce brand, Hot Drops.

Andrew Whiting’s sauce started out as a Christmas present in 2020 for loved ones and a way to preserve the large amount of peppers he had harvested from his garden.

He bottled it up, gave the bottles a wax seal and put a label his sister, Leigh, made on the glass before gifting them to friends and family.

“I basically fermented 45 pounds of peppers in these big glass vessels I bought,” Whiting said. “After Christmas I got all these calls asking if they could buy some more.”

Whiting began to experiment with different recipes until he created his original four sauces.

He started his LLC six months after Christmas, acquired his food and health certificates and began working with a co-packing facility in Sonoma County to recreate his recipes and bottle it for sale.

“I couldn’t make (my sauce) fast enough,” Whiting said. “It was selling out online continuously.”

Whiting’s vegan hot sauce recipes are zero calorie with low sodium and also have an added post-biotic element to help digestion.

Each sauce is made in small batches through lacto-fermentation, the same process used to make dill pickles, kimchi and sauerkraut.

The sauce is also produced in a facility that also makes pre-biotic beverages, which is how they are able to make it a post-biotic condiment.

Hot Drops currently has a seven sauce line-up, from its “Not Sauce” holding the flavor of hot sauce without the heat, and up to “Trop Thunder,” its hottest sauce.

The most popular flavors, according to sales data, are the Fres-Yes and JalaPasilla flavors, which both sit in the medium heat level of the Hot Drops lineup.

Whiting created his “Not Sauce” as a stepping stone for people who either can’t eat hot sauce or don’t know where to start or what heat level they prefer.

“I think it applies to a much bigger potential market of hot sauce consumers, which are the people who don’t consider themselves hot sauce people,” Whiting said.

Whiting’s hot sauces are only available online with a handful of Sonoma County restaurants having a few bottles on their tables.

Whiting said after a recent surge in sales, they’re sold-out and are taking preorders for when inventory is restocked April 4.

But Whiting recently started collaborating with locally owned restaurants to get the word out about Hot Drops and promote other Sonoma County businesses.

These businesses also happen to be his favorite restaurants.

His first collaboration was with The Lunch Box in Sebastopol where he and owner Derek Harn spent a few hours coming up with a one-off menu item featuring Lunchbox recipes with Hot Drops incorporated into the meal.

The Lunch Box makes its own cheese in-house, an American style cheese emulsified with beer. Whiting and Harn switched out the beer with Hot Drops sauce instead.

The restaurant released a one-day collaboration menu Feb. 26 featuring Lunch Box’s Zesty Oklahoma Fried Onion burger with Fres-Yes Hot Drops infused cheese, a Fres-Yes Chicken Sandwich with Hot Drops infused slaw, and Fres-Yes Cheesy Fries.

The Lunch Box also sells the Fres-Yes and Taco Boyz bottles.

“We got really good feedback,” Harn said. “We also put two bottles (for sale) out on Saturday and they were mostly gone by the end of the day on Sunday.”

On top of growing the brand, Whiting wants to continue partnering with local restaurants to get his product on the table and has a few collaborations in the works.

He said these partnerships help show potential customers that Hot Drops is more than just a condiment.

“The goal is to formalize the direct consumer space, use those local businesses and put our sauces on the table to create a local rise,” Whiting said.

“But maintaining a product that’s manufactured from seed to sale entirely in Sonoma County is very important to me.”

You can reach Staff Writer Sara Edwards at 707-521-5378 or sara.edwards@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @sedwards380.