When 10-year-old Tyler Sullivan surprised his parents, Kristen and Benjamin Sullivan, with multiple purchases of Fortnite V-bucks on his mom’s credit card in July 2020, the result was an immediate ban on electronic devices until he could pay her back.
Chores didn’t earn the money fast enough, so he decided to make salsa, using his dad’s recipe and peppers from the family’s pandemic garden, and sell it via Facebook.
“I really didn’t think it would turn into anything special,” Tyler said. “But people kept ordering. They said it was so delicious, and they wanted to know when I would be making more. Soon, I had paid back my mom, and I was making more money for myself.”
“When Tyler wanted a new phone, we set up ordering on SignUp Genius,” Kristen Sullivan said. “I’d post pictures of Tyler making salsa on Facebook and let people know that we were making 50 jars that weekend. We’d sell out in 15 to 20 minutes. At first, they were buying to help him out. But when they kept asking for more, and didn’t have a problem paying $10 a jar, we knew we had something.”
Credit: Courtesy of Jessica Griggs
Credit: Courtesy of Jessica Griggs
Tyler wasn’t just making the salsa, he also had tweaked the recipe. “I took my dad’s base recipe, the one he served at poker games, and added our fresh peppers and my own combination of spices,” he said.
By 2021, when they decided to sell the salsa online and at local farmers markets, Roswell-based Sully’s Slammin’ Fresh salsa had become an official business. “We had to have FDA approval of our salsa in order to get insurance,” Benjamin Sullivan said. “It took us three months of playing around in the kitchen to develop a salsa recipe that was shelf-stable and would meet regulations, but tasted the way we wanted it to, like it had been made by a 10-year-old in his family’s blender.”
The family had been accustomed to working at home, making 50-gallon batches at a time. Now, they needed to be working on a much larger scale. They found a co-packer, Sunbelt Packaging Co., working out of a commercial kitchen in Decatur. The owner, Donnell Crear, was instrumental in helping them work through the business development process, and then started making the salsa in large batches, delivering pallets of the finished product to the Sullivan residence.
They now sell their salsa at the Alpharetta, Marietta and Canton farmers markets, as well as on their website.
There are two salsas: a mild version (labeled “My little brother can eat it!”) and a hot version (labeled “My mom says it’s too hot!”).
Selling at the markets continues to be a family affair, with grandfather Don Heatherly staffing the booth at the Canton market, Benjamin and Tyler at the Marietta market, and Kristen and younger son Jacob at the Alpharetta market. The money they make goes back into the business, but the boys get paid for their time at the market, and some of the profits go into their college funds.
Credit: Jessica Griggs
Credit: Jessica Griggs
The family’s goal is to get the salsa into such stores as Whole Foods, Sprouts and Fresh Market, but they know they need a larger co-packer, in order to scale up production and make it possible to sell their salsa at a lower price.
In the meantime, they won top prize in their category at this year’s University of Georgia Flavor of Georgia competition, and the family is being considered for a television series about kid entrepreneurs. Tyler’s advice for kids his age wanting to go into business: “Don’t give up. Have fun with it.”
And, after three years of making it, the salsa remains a family favorite — a standby for taco Tuesdays and the thing they always are asked to bring to parties.
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