LAINGSBURG — Years before Rich Steffens ever thought about making his own barbecue sauce, no single recipe ever quite satisfied his palate.
Instead, when he ate at barbecue restaurants in and around Lansing he would squirt a healthy dollop of the eatery's sweetest and then its most acidic sauce on his plate, mixing them to create the taste he craved.
"Something sweet and spicy," Steffens said.
He started experimenting with recipes and ingredients to make his own sauce five years ago, never dreaming it would eventually turn into a profitable side hustle. But this year Charred Sauces and Seasonings, the business Steffens and his wife Trish started in May, did just that.
The Laingsburg couple, now empty nesters with five grown children between them, make and bottle their barbecue sauces, rubs and other creations inside a church kitchen close to home. They sell their products in a dozen area stores now, including Meijer Capital City Market in downtown Lansing. In November their signature barbecue sauce earned a third-place honor in the Scovie Awards, a global sauce competition.
Less than a year in, it's become a profitable venture.
"We're just taking it day to day," Steffens said. "We don't know what to expect. We don't know what's going to happen."
'Where'd you get that sauce?'
Rich Steffens created his first barbecue sauce five years ago in his kitchen at home.
"I looked at some sweet barbecue sauce recipes and I looked at some vinegar spicy ones and I got a feel for what ingredients went into them," he said. "I wrote out my own and mixed it up."
Steffens fine-tuned the recipe each time he made a new batch, adding more or less of certain ingredients.
"After doing that a couple of times, I figured I had it right where I wanted it," he said.
He served the sauce alongside his smoked and barbecued meats, at the dinner table and eventually, at gatherings with friends and family.
"Where'd you get that sauce?" people would ask. When they learned it was his concoction, they often suggested he try and sell it.
"I was always like, 'I don't even know anything about business. I've never done anything like that. I don't have time to do anything like that.'"
Then in the spring Rich Steffens realized he actually might. The couple's children, Rich has three and Trish has two, no longer live at home. And even though the pair works full time — Rich as a project manager for an Illinois-based company and Trish as an account clerk at Potter Park Zoo — there's plenty of time for making sauce.
"I like the idea of something to do together," Trish said. "We work really well together so I was excited to try it. Why not?"
"We're looking at retirement in five years and we thought maybe it would be something that could kind of keep us busy in retirement if we were still doing it then," Rich Steffens said.
So the couple turned to Michigan State University's Product Center for guidance, took an online course in acidified foods through North Carolina State University and started looking for a licensed kitchen to make sauce in.
They started at a local American Legion post and eventually settled on working out of Laingsburg's First Congregational Church.
The business name is a nod to Rich's nickname, "Chard." His children and their friends have called him that for years.
Gradual growth and success
Today the Steffenses usually make between 72 and 96 bottles of sauce in three hours in the church kitchen. It took time to master efficiency, they said. Then they started small, selling their products at the Holt Farmers Market every weekend.
Today their sauces are for sale on shelves at a dozen businesses including Phillips Cider Market & Bar, Capital City Market and Twiggies in Lansing.
Their "Signature BBQ Sauce," a blend of sweet and spicy, is still the most popular sauce the Steffenses make but the couple offer three other barbecue sauces, including a mayonnaise and horseradish-based "Alabama White Sauce," four tomato sauces, a taco sauce, buffalo wing sauce and three different rubs.
Rich creates the products through a process that involves both research and a fair amount of experimentation.
"Once I play around with something and I get something that tastes good, it feels like an accomplishment," he said.
Winning a third-place award in the 2024 Scovie Awards in the category of "All-natural mild/medium barbecue sauce" felt like validation, Rich Steffens said. Charred Sauces and Seasonings also took home a third-place honor for its logo.
"It's a big deal," he said. "It's really a global competition."
The Steffenses have invested nearly $15,000 in Charred Sauces and Seasonings. It began turning a profit in the fall. The business will offer a sampling of some of its products from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Capital City Market, located at 600 E. Michigan Ave. in Lansing, on Jan. 6.
The couple is taking the gradual growth "as it comes," Rich Steffens said, with plans to add more sauce flavors and potentially more stores that sell them in the next year.
"We're both very happy with how this first year turned out," Trish said.
"We want it to remain as busy, maybe a little bit busier than it has been," Rich Steffens said. "What to do, how to do it, we'll figure it out when we get there. That's what we've kind of always been good at when we work together. We'll figure it out."
Contact Rachel Greco at rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @GrecoatLSJ .
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