Wendy Bridgeman and her family's artisanal, farm-to-table hot sauce brand evolved from a garden-to-table hobby.

     About 20 years ago, Wendy and her husband, Paul, started making hot sauce with extra peppers from their garden.  They developed a recipe with a balance  of flavor and heat that didn't have roots in a specific cuisine, so that it would go well with a variety of foods. They would serve it when they had friends and family over to eat, and soon they were giving away bottles of what their friends called "Laguna Niguel's best kept secret."

     "Chone," the name of their brand, is a shortened version of "chonus," a combination of choice and bonus, which was common slang the couple used in their college days, Wendy at CSUN and Paul at UCLA..

     As word spread, the demand for Chone Hot Sauce grew among their widening circle of friends and family.  "We love to eat, our friends love to eat, and so we wanted to share it with everyone," said Wendy.  "People would take it home, then it got to a point where we had to make more and more."

     Before she started making her own, Wendy couldn't eat hot sauce because she is sensitive to a lot of foods.  "When I ate our sauce, I didn't have any pain," she said.

    This, along with encouragement from friends who had tried it, ignited her passion to grow the hobby into a small business.  Within the last year, the couple began selling Chone Hot Sauce five days a week at 7 local Farmers' Markets, and Wendy can be found at the Irvine Farmers' Markets on Saturday mornings selling bottles and giving tasters.

    Chone has two sauces; a tangy green sauce and smoky red sauce, along with a dried pepper shake.

    "We hand-wash and inspect every pepper, onion, and piece of garlic that goes into each batch," said Wendy.  "It's a real food."

    Products like Chone offer consumers an alternative to mass produced, corporate food.  Most grocery store hot sauces use ingredients that contain unpronounceable chemicals.  Wendy sources the peppers locally, and her and Paul make the sauce without any expanders, fillers, added water, or preservatives.

    "I think for everyone to know what they're eating is important," said Wendy.

     Wendy and her brand are part of an artisanal food movement that's catching on with the younger generation of consumers who want to eat natural, local food.  "I see it with my kids, they're becoming more aware, wanting to learn how to grow their own fruits and vegetables." she said.

    Paul, who has worked in business-to-business sales and marketing his whole life, enjoys the customer interface that the passion  project provides.  "The Farmer's Market is a perfect forum to interact with our customers one bottle at a time," he said.

     About once a week Wendy and Paul produce small batches in a local rented commercial kitchen.  From cooking the sauce, to bottling, sealing, labeling, and selling one bottle at a time, each step is done by hand.

    Wendy is adamant about making the hot sauce by hand in small batches, and in the future, they would like to do more internet sales and expand, eventually integrating their own certified organic pepper farm.

    Wendy who used to work for Coca-Cola, finds it more satisfying to handcraft something from start to finish and watch someone truly enjoy it.  "It's a really exciting business.  It doesn't feel like work because it's something we love," said Wendy.