A saucy tale with a very happy ending
Sep 19, 2007 04:30 AM
Susan Sampson
A happy accident has catapulted three Vaughan guys into the barbecue-sauce business.
It began at a backyard get-together in August, 2006. The grill-happy Charlie Di Pasquale called out for barbecue sauce, but there wasn't any. So he ran into the kitchen and mixed together whatever he could find. "He's the kind of guy, he'll go into a kitchen and stir up anything," says brother and partner John Di Pasquale.
Just eight months later, Charlie's Sticky Sauce was jostling for attention on store shelves where the condiments live. If barbecue sauce mated with hot sauce, this would be their love child. It's delicious – sweet and tangy and spicy, all at the same time. You can get it hot, hotter and hottest. The Original has an edge, but is still bearable for sensitive types. Stupid Hot is thicker, darker – and hotter. In between is Mid-Evil. The sauces are fat-free, and have no preservatives or artificial colours or flavours. Website charliesstickyfoods.com lists local stores that carry the product.
The brothers got together every Sunday to try the versatile sauce in a new dish, from meatballs to stir-fried potatoes, peppers and onions. They gave it to family, then friends, then strangers to taste-test. Meanwhile, buddy Enzo Ricciardi became a partner. The fast action is quite a feat for guys who aren't exactly familiar with the food business. Ricciardi is a landscaper. John Di Pasquale describes himself as "an arborist trying to be a police officer." Charlie, he says, is in the "fire protection business." He installs sprinklers – appropriate, considering the fiery sauce that bears his name.
Vaughan Citizen
September 06, 2008 11:08 PM
By: Caroline Grech
When you have a barbecue, running out of barbecue sauce probably ranks as one of the worst things that can happen.
Not so for Vaughan brothers John and Charlie DiPasquale. One June night two years ago when they were firing up the barbecue to feast on wings and ribs, they ran out of sauce.
Charlie didn’t worry.
As someone who enjoys dabbling in the kitchen, he read the back of the empty bottle, found similar ingredients and mixed them together.
The results weren’t the greatest at first.
“It was edible. We ate everything,” he said, laughing over a meal this week in a Woodbridge restaurant.
After Charlie started experimenting with different combinations and serving it during larger family gatherings, the requests starting coming in.
“People started telling me I should sell it,” Charlie said.
He and brother John soon joined forces with Charlie’s longtime friend, Enzo Ricciardi, and the trio decided to sell their own homemade sauce.
They created a company called Charlie’s Sticky Foods Inc. but it wasn’t long before road blocks sprung up.
After meeting with someone who knew their way around the food business, Charlie was discouraged at the advice he received: get a significant amount of money to pour into marketing.
“I was discouraged for a couple of days,” the 35-year-old founder of the company said.
He admits that at the time of the meeting, the barbecue sauce was still in a mason jar and there was only a sketch of how it would look bottled, along with a rough logo design.
After giving it serious thought, he asked longtime friend Mr. Ricciardi, who owns a landscaping business himself, to come on board.
They moved ahead with bottling the sauce, refined the logo to a mischievous looking devil with a wide-eyed grin and started sending out letters to small grocers in the hope of generating interest in the product.
One of the first tests of the sauces — which come in stupid hot, mid-evil and original — was at the annual Barrie Ribfest last summer.
They were equipped only with the sauces and some crackers.
“I thought I would be giving bottles away, but we sold 500 bottles,” Charlie said.
They also placed fourth in an amateur competition recently.
These days, you can find Charlie’s Sticky Sauce in local Dominion, A&P, Sobey’s and at various HomeSense and Winners chains across the country.
“Our little company has grown by word-of-mouth,” Charlie said.
He has this advice for other aspiring entrepreneurs.
“You have to believe in your product and you have to be able to sell your product,” Charlie said, adding he still has his nine original recipes laminated and stored away in a safe place.
For more information on Charlie’s Sticky Sauce, go to www.charliesstickyfoods.com.
Attributed to: Taste T.O. – www.tasteto.com
Charlie’s Sauce is Sticky-licious
Posted by Melissa Bell in products on November 4, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Charlie’s Sticky Sauce, a new BBQ condiment to arrive in various locations throughout and surrounding our fair city, certainly lives up to its name...“Sticky”… For anyone who likes their grill sauces and dips with a hard sweet kick to the palate rather than just a plain ol’ kick, then the line of Charlie’s Sticky Sauce sauces is tailor-made for them.
Available in ‘Original’, ‘Mid-Evil’ (Hah!), and ‘Stupid Hot’ (Oh stop! My ribs! I mean it!), my barbecue-loving pals and I actually found the ‘Original’ strength to be more inflammatory than the ‘Mid-Evil’ (which is very hoi-sin-esque). We began sampling each one straight out of the bottle and licking off our grubby little fingers (hey, we’re food-lovers – not scientists). All three intensities pack quite a punch in terms of heat, but none is lip-blistering. The ‘Stupid Hot’ was maybe a tad mouth-numbing – not painful (my friends and I are relatively fire-proof) – but there’s enough caliente in this one to potentially knock out the flavour of the food it’s attempting to enhance if one goes too far with it straight up.
I would be tempted to mix some of this with mayonnaise and a squeeze of lime and serve it up with some grilled jumbo shrimp. On its own, it would make a great dip for some appetizer meatballs or grilled chunks of any hearty sausage. I’m also looking forward to trying this out as a dip for grilled cheese sandwiches or some French fries; any place where ketchup might be considered too weenie, Charlie’s Sticky Sauce definitely ups the ZDDQ (zippity-doo-dah quotient).
On the grill, the firemaster friend of mine slapped it on chicken and some flank steak. The chicken had been marinating all day and night in a secret mixture (the firemaster discloses nothing), but it blended very nicely with the bold flavours of the Sticky Sauce (Mid-Evil on the chicken; Original on the steak). On both meats, the sauce crusted nicely, but keep a watchful eye on the flame action – all that sugar can char quickly if the heat is too high or if it’s applied too early in the cooking process, turning a lovely dead animal meal into a big blackened mess of backyard grill-kill. Hey, there is always the option to add more of Charlie’s Sticky Sauce when the food gets to the table. And chances are very good that anyone who has tried the stuff will want to.
