Today we’d like to introduce you to Greg Hallmark and Ron Dillon.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
During a trip to St. John, VI in the Caribbean in 1994 with some close friends, an experience with a delicious sauce with a taste infused with the perfect combination of tangy sweetness from the local island fruits along with the right amount of heat formed an inspiration.
For years, the passion of trying to create this type of sauce seemed difficult at best until early 2016 when the last piece of the puzzle was solved with the 20th ingredient added to finally create…
“KLOWNS ON FIRE” TASTY HOT SAUCES”
While in St. John, we happened upon a starving little “KAT” dubbed with the name “Tabasco Kitty”. He was a skinny little guy who visited daily, and by the end of our vacation, he was a “PORKER”! We originally thought it was the food, but he kept licking the sauce completely off first and suddenly the realization was the flavor created was on to something great!
The diversity of these sauces can be left up to the individual’s imagination whether directly applying, cooking, grilling or marinating. Some fantastic choices would be Grilled Chicken, Chicken Wings, Beef, Mexican Cuisine, Lasagna, Chili, Pork Loin, Pork Ribs, Vegetables, Pasta, Eggs, Rice, Cream Cheese and Goat Cheese and “YES” Ice Cream! One of our biggest high’s is hearing how people are using our sauces.
We are extremely proud to make this taste from the Caribbean with a Texas twist available to give everyone that wonderful fruit taste that starts out sweet but bites back with the perfect heat combination with the Carolina Reaper pepper.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Our team has faced many challenges along this journey, but we’ve have accepted the fact that these challenges only open up more opportunities as we continue to just move forward. We’ve had some great advice from some of our mentors along the way, and also some advice that wasn’t so good. Distinguishing good from bad advice can always be a challenge yet is a major part of the equation of making decisions. In the end, our industry is filled with many nurturing and wonderful hot sauce companies and especially the people who are part of them that continue to make what we do completely a pure joy.
We put a tremendous amount of energy with very limited time, but always feel rewarded when we meet people who are first-time purchasers and always love when we get to talk to our return customers that we consider our friends.
You may have noticed the name of our company and our sauces starts with a “K”! This just defines we don’t like using the letter “C”. Greatest Part – When we do make mistakes, we can always say “What do you expect from a couple of Klowns!”
We’d love to hear more about your business.
We specialize in hot sauces with Caribbean flavors including Mango, Peach and Pink Guava using the world’s hottest pepper, the Carolina Reaper. We’ve tried to specialize in an arena that is unique to our industry, including just releasing our first hot sauce for Ice Cream with Dark chocolate and Raspberries!
In our first 29 months in business we have earned 26 national awards, including wins in The Scovies, ZestFest Golden Chili’s Awards, Screaming Mimi’s in NYC, International Flavor Awards, Chili Pepper Magazine, and the Austin Hot Sauce Festival. Truth is, we are always humbled when we win an award.
Our proudest moments have been with giving back and always making sure we donate to charities. This is one of the main reasons we wanted to get this business going. This year we were named as one of the Underwriters of the Highland Park Fur Ball in Dallas – something we are hugely proud of. We also were able to deliver ten bicycles to this year’s WFAA’s Santa’s Helpers right before Christmas. In addition, we always make sure to donate to the Wounded Warriors!
What were you like growing up?
We both grew up in the military environment and later on in our professional lives travelling to many parts of the world experiencing and being immersed within wonderful cultures and the fascinating and delicious local and regional cuisines available. These experiences we believe formed a more global view and appreciation for all people. Meeting later on in our professional lives, we found we had similar passions formed from growing up with very similar backgrounds and that every moment is special and giving back is not an expectation, it is what we love!
Contact Info:
- Address: 7917 Country Ridge Lane
Plano, Texas 75024 - Website: www.klownsonfire.com
- Phone: 1.844.4klowns
- Email: ghallmar@klownsonfire.com, rodillon@klownsonfire.com
- Instagram: @klownsonfire
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/klownsonfire/?eid=ARBXCVU_9olvHMwwCqcx7fMPjSSyhGbqUEE3nDIJj4MQs5UBDyJsYZ0CcKJZJHP5_rZ2tigcqYbJNYSU
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