Today we’d like to introduce you to Brad Johnson
Hi Brad, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My first job at age 13 was mowing lawns and gardening, and I’ve always had a passion for growing plants ever since. When I was at home on paternity leave in 2022 with a two year old, a recovering wife, and a newborn I decided it was time to start a small project that would provide a healthy escape and a moment of peace after long days of dad duty. Having become recently obsessed with the show Hot Ones and starting to get a higher and higher spice tolerance, it sounded fun to try my hand at growing a couple pepper plants and making my own hot sauce. Turns out I still had that green thumb and ended up with around a hundred bottles of homemade hot sauce. In order to fund my growing hobby I decided to take the bottles to the Houston Hops and Hot Sauce Festival and sold every single one.
Today I have transformed a small chunk of our family backyard into my pepper paradise where I specialize in growing new hybrid pepper crosses, always looking for the new hottest varieties you can grow. In my small 100 square foot garden in the middle of the energy corridor, I grow every single pepper that goes into our hot sauces. After an extremely abundant year in 2024 where my pepper plants reached 12 feet tall and produced over 150 pounds of superhots, me and my wife started an Instagram account in hopes of selling the hundreds of bottles of hot sauce coming from the garden. 20 million views later, we have become a mainstay at all of the major Texas Hot Sauce festivals and many of the local pop-up markets around town.
What sets us apart is the passion that goes into every single bottle. We source only the highest quality of ingredients, use very simple recipes and redefine the term “small batch” making everything by hand using glass mason jars to ferment the harvest… the same way my grandfather did when I was young. My brilliant and creative wife is the creative genius behind all of our branding, making all of our labels, website design, and event displays.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The biggest challenge came in 2023. After the initial success of selling our hot sauce and creating a niche market for ourselves, I made the decision to graduate out of fabrics pots on the patio and invest in clearing out a small space in our backyard and build a small scale version of my dream pepper garden. I meticulously researched then spent quite a few long nights in the garage building beautiful cedar raised beds that I designed myself. Once spring arrived, I excitedly planted my seedlings into the beds and dreamed of the bountiful harvest in the coming months.
However instead of giant hardy plants loaded with peppers, the seedlings stalled barely growing at all for nearly a month. The peppers that did manage to produce fruit were small, misshapen, and lacked the capsaicin punch I expected. Something was desperately wrong. Desperate I turned to chemical fertilizers thinking they just lacked nutrition. Instead of solving the problem, it made things worse and the excess nitrogen attracted hordes of aphids, snails, and caterpillars that slowly started to destroy my plants one by one. My dream turned into a nightmare, as the lack of production threatened to end our small business before it even began. Thanks to a few plants that were left in pots, and one row that produced a small harvest we were able to barely cover our expenses, but the cost of the garden construction loomed large over my head. Had I selfishly wasted thousands of dollars that should have been invested into my kid’s college funds? Did I waste all those hours in the garden away from my family for absolutely nothing? Should I just give up and cut my losses?
I cut the plants down early to prevent a years long infestation, and called it quits for the season way earlier than I expected. Rather than giving up, I spent the next 6 months getting a masters degree in organic gardening from YouTube University. I sent my soil to Texas A&M and had it tested to find out exactly what nutrients what was in my dirt, then completely rebuilt the microbiome using organic amendments and the highest quality compost you can source. It seemed like a shot in the dark standing in my garden beds after work in the middle of the night sprinkling crab shells and dried seaweed over the soil, and hauling hundreds of pounds of compost into the backyard. I threw every chemical I had purchased over the years in the trash, and planted my tender seedlings into their new homes. The resulting plants were a massive viral success and catapulted our brand from nothing to a household name in the niche pepper growing community growing over 12 feet tall.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
When I’m not in the garden or out selling hot sauce, I produce, shoot and edit videos for clients large and small. I have worked in many different industries over the years including independent film, television, commercials, and e-commerce. My other side passion is producing my own independent documentary films and have recently completed the first episodes for my first documentary TV series, Not My Father’s Child. The series follows three runaway children of Fred Phelps, the “God hates Fags” pastor from the Westboro Baptist Church who rose to fame for their cruel protest of Mathew Shepherd and the funerals of fallen soldiers. Over the course of 5 years we followed our main characters documenting the profound effect growing up in such an extreme cult had on their lives, 20-30 years after leaving.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
Hands down my wife has been the biggest supporter, cheerleader, and partner that you could ask for in this journey. From allowing me to takeover our patio with 30 pepper plants in pots, to designing the first label, creating the website, spray painting our event displays… she has taken my passion for peppers and turned it into a fun, friendly approachable brand. Plus she’s the one who has to taste all of my experimental recipes through the years… some have been truly awful, and all have been way spicier than most people expect. Not to mention getting gased with pepper fumes multiple times a week when I cook a new batch of hot sauce! Even in 2023 when I had invested thousands into building my garden and it looked bleak, she never wavered in her support of my passion and belief that I could make this successful.
Our family and friends have also been extremely supportive, promoting our sauce, sharing our instagram posts, and buying plenty of bottles. My in-laws have operated local festival booths with me, and my mom actively takes orders from her co-workers with a little bit of peer pressure to cough up some cash.
Pricing:
- $12.00- 5oz Bottle
- $15.00- Area 51 (Hottest Sauce in TX without using chemical extracts)
- $55.00 for sample pack of all 5 flavors.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.SpicyDadda.com
- Instagram: @SpicyDadda
- Facebook: @SpicyDadda
