Sauce success heats up
By Sam Van Schie - Nelson Star
Published: September 16, 2009 6:00 PM
Sitting in front of the Redfish Grill, Edmond Segbeaya is well-known for selling his award winning hot sauce on the street.
As people pass, he greets most of them by name. Suffice to say he’s something of a local treasure.
Segbeaya’s sauce, Ebesse Zozo, was made popular in Nelson. In 2002, a manager at the Kootenay Co-op asked Segbeaya why he was buying case after case of Habanera pepper.
“I told him it’s for my family recipe, a special hot sauce,” Segbeaya said. “The next time I came in I brought a sample for the staff. They asked if they could sell it in the deli; that’s how it started.”
After that, Segbeaya started selling the sauce on the street out of a cooler.
“I’d walk up and down, telling people about my sauce and letting them try it,” he said. “I wanted to see if I could make it a business. I had nothing to lose.”
As popularity grew Segbeaya moved his production out of his home and into a commercial kitchen and began marketing the product to stores across North America. Today almost every grocery store in Nelson carries the sauce, and several Canadian chain stores also stock it. He’s brought the sauce to competitions around the world and saw it featured in magazines and on television shows.
Most recently, Segbeaya was included in an upcoming episode of Dragons’ Den, airing Wednesday, Oct. 7 at 8 p.m. on CBC Television.
“It’s just amazing how things happen,” said Segbeaya. “I came to Nelson as a refugee. I never could have dreamed I’d be going all around the world.”
Segbeaya remains a one-man show, making and marketing Ebesse Zozo all himself in Nelson. He uses a number of local ingredients, when they’re available.
For more information visit awassi.net.
