Goran Vrabec created the I Like It Hot brand, producing six tonnes of hot peppers last year, with 15 tonnes expected this season
Four years ago, hot food lover Goran Vrabec from Jakovlje in the Zagorje region, owner of an audio and video equipment rental company, ordered by mail fifteen chilli jalapenos seeds and asked his mother to plant them in the greenhouse. The results, he said, were fantastic. So the hobby soon became a business. He created the I Like It Hot brand, with the first awards coming in – second place in a Los Angeles global competition for his Brutalero Scorpion, Tportal.hr reported on July 17, 2016.
In just several years, from test chilli jalapenos you made a world vice-champion?
“I was also surprised by the success of the I Like It Hot brand. After the first harvest we made dozens of sauces, handed them out to friends for Christmas, one of them made the branding and after a few days people began to call, asking for more… I wrote the numbers down, talked to my parents and arranged for a serious business – they gave me the greenhouse and in the spring we began with 500 plants. I formed a family farm, we began selling sauces and seedlings, mostly through the web shop. We began advertising on Facebook, got a bunch of fans and began building our story. This year we will have more than a million Kuna income. The income doubles every year, in four to five years we will be a serious producer. Six people are connected to the project, among them my parents and girlfriend. I have zero loans, except for borrowing some money from my parents.”
When did large scale production begin?
“In 2014, when we planted 5,000 seedlings. Two years ago we hired a designer to rebrand us, which was a great move, as sales jumped 30% in a few months. The web whop generates half the commerce, and half of that are gift-packages – we sell nine hot sauces in a wooden box, also for large companies with their logo, with the brand on sale in 30 stores and 100 restaurants, with three to four new ones every week. Once a month our Hot Eaters Club organises a Hot Dinner in a restaurant, which is good for our promotion as there is a branded set of products on the table, so people can taste them.”
How many seedlings do you have this year?
“We have 20,000 jalapeno plants on half an acres, half of which are in a greenhouse, the rest protected from hail with a net. The cultivation of jalapenos is highly profitable per area unit, if you have someone to sell them to. We united production and processing as fresh jalapenos cannot stay that way long. The Croatian market still doesn’t consume too many of such products, but we are persistent in developing it. Being the first mean paving the way that others are taking too, with no one to ask for advice.”
There are over 50,000 chilli sorts in the world, how many do you grow?
“We began very broadly with 60 sorts, but we had to specialise. New product placement costs around 5,000 Kuna, while we have plenty of products and small production. We now grow 30 sorts such as jalapeno, aji, habanero, bhut jolokia, seven pot and the hottest in the world, carolina reaper. The pepper adapts quickly to the climate and changes, becoming more or less hot. Characteristics depend on the season too, 2014 was very rainy so peppers were watery and less hot, so after fermentation we had to get rid of some of the water to gain viscosity, density of the sauce. This is something not even the largest brands can handle easily.”
When talking about sorts, harvests and sauce variations, it sounds like you speak of wines. Are you considering a barrique edition?
“Yes! We are set to market a limited edition sauce. It has been aged in a burned wooden barrel where it darkened and took on a barrique taste. Our long term goal are aged sauces. When we harvest the peppers, we grind them, add salt and ferment the mix for three weeks. After that the sauce is kept in plastic barrels for three months. The current goal is to aged them for six months, switching to oak barrels, where they would age for two years.”
