Omaha Farmers Market favorite calling it quits after 8 years of 'Keeping it Spicy' - WOWT

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - For the last eight years, almost every weekend during the Farmers Market season, Mary Current could be found at her stand greeting customers both new and old.

Throughout the time, Mary’s stand has become a fan favorite: Crazy Gringa Hot Sauce. Her life for the better part of a decade has revolved around peppers.

“It started kind of like “Miss Feels,” I made it for friends, [my] friends loved it [and said] you need to do something with this,” Mary says.

But Mary’s reach is much further than just the local Farmers Market.

“I mean, I’ve sent hot sauce to every state in the union,” she says. “And I have to laugh because for whoever was our 1000th like on Facebook, they got hot sauce, a T-shirt, a koozie, all this stuff. It would be a guy from Australia.”

Customers from France, Germany, Hawai’i, and more have bought her bottles of hot sauce to bring home to share with their friends and families.

Mary says she never expected her small business to go that far. “It’s amazing.”

Crazy Gringa Hot Sauce has enabled her to work with local non-profits like City Sprouts and Big Muddy Urban Farm. Some of her favorite parts of her eight years of business have been working with them, she says.

Both City Sprouts and Big Muddy have grown specialty peppers for Mary, and in return, she makes special sauces.

Mary has her son to thank for helping her get into City Sprouts and Whole Foods, and says she’s grateful to every restaurant and grocery store where her sauce can be found.

Mary has four signature sauces: jalapeno, habanero, ghost pepper, and chipotle. She also carries a variety of small-batch sauces, like her scorching Scorpion mixed berry sauce, or the chili lime.

For each small batch, she starts at her home kitchen, perfecting the recipe. Once perfect, she moves to a local commercial kitchen where she makes and bottles the batches.

All of it is done herself, even the delivery. Her husband is her ‘logistics guy,’ helping her take care of online orders and picking up palates of bottles that are waiting to be filled.

“Making hot sauce, when I make it, is probably my happy place. I like to do it, and I have it down to such a science, that it’s not hard to make it myself,” she says.

Despite her popularity and seady stream of customers, Sunday’s Farmers Market was one of her last.

Although closing her business and saying goodbye to her Farmer’s Market regulars is bittersweet, she says it’s time for her and her husband to have a new adventure, and do things they haven’t been able to do.

“We have that bucket list, it’s time to start filling it. I want to learn how to make sausage. I have a smoker, I’d like to get better at smoking meats, I have my grandmother’s noodle machine, it’s an antique, I want to start learning and making noodles.”

Mary says she will also use her retirement to travel and visit her grandkids in Arkansas.

“I went grocery shopping the other day and I see all these peppers and I go ‘oh!’ and then I had to stop myself and say ‘you’re not making hot sauce anymore, you don’t have to worry about what kind of supplies you have to get for next week.”

One of the things she will miss the most, though, is the easiness of the Sunday morning Farmer’s Markets.

“I think just the way that people stop by and want to talk, and always have a smile on their face when they come by, and they love our product,” she says. “They couldn’t have been more gracious and loving, but sad, too. “How can you do this too us?” I say I’m old, I need to retire, and they’ve been just wonderful about the whole thing.”

Regulars at the market tell 6 News that Mary will be sorely missed - her presence, her conversation, and of course, her hot sauce.

Copyright 2021 WOWT. All rights reserved.

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Omaha Farmers Market favorite calling it quits after 8 years of 'Keeping it Spicy' - WOWT
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