Jalapa Jar

Tired of the 9-5 & ready to take a shot at running their own business, cousins Tommy Byrnes & Steve Smith put together a whiteboard of business ideas. The two would come home from work and brainstorm nightly, searching for the next great idea...all while snacking on Tommy's fresh salsa recipe. Finally, it hit them - why not sell the salsa! The two then found themselves at the 2015 Austin Hot Sauce Festival - in the sweltering 110 degree Texas summer heat...but at a nearby AirBnB, as the two hadn't formed a formal business yet and were denied entry - so they threw a house party next to the festival and handed out free samples and free beers. Finally, they had their market research! Jalapa Jar was then quickly accepted into Smorgasburg, the premier outdoor food market in NYC and gave them a platform to gain customer feedback, build the brand name and perfect manufacturing the salsa on a weekly basis - to keep it fresh. They then realized this was the biggest differentiator from brands in the grocery store - there was (is) no national brand making a truly fresh, all natural salsa - so the two cousins set out to build a kitchen and a foundation to scale. They were then discovered by the Whole Foods Northeast team and granted shelf-space in NE area Whole Foods and quickly found high velocity success. In 2022, Jalapa Jar was expanded to 3 new Whole Foods regions (NA, SP, SW) and again in the summer of '23 to RM, PN, SO & FL. Jalapa Jar is now distributed nationwide and looking to put ourselves on the map at Expo West '24.