Charlie DiPasquale (from left), Enzo Ricciardi and John DiPasquale of Charlie’s Sticky Foods prepare a rack of ribs for a competition at the Barrie Ribfest last summer. Their barbecue sauce is now in stores.
Vaughan
September 06, 2008 11:08 PM
By: Caroline Grech
When you have a barbecue, running out of barbecue sauce probably ranks as one of the worst things that can happen.
Not so for Vaughan brothers John and Charlie DiPasquale. One June night two years ago when they were firing up the barbecue to feast on wings and ribs, they ran out of sauce.
Charlie didn’t worry.
As someone who enjoys dabbling in the kitchen, he read the back of the empty bottle, found similar ingredients and mixed them together.
The results weren’t the greatest at first.
“It was edible. We ate everything,” he said, laughing over a meal this week in a Woodbridge restaurant.
After Charlie started experimenting with different combinations and serving it during larger family gatherings, the requests starting coming in.
“People started telling me I should sell it,” Charlie said.
He and brother John soon joined forces with Charlie’s longtime friend, Enzo Ricciardi, and the trio decided to sell their own homemade sauce.
They created a company called Charlie’s Sticky Foods Inc. but it wasn’t long before road blocks sprung up.
After meeting with someone who knew their way around the food business, Charlie was discouraged at the advice he received: get a significant amount of money to pour into marketing.
“I was discouraged for a couple of days,” the 35-year-old founder of the company said.
He admits that at the time of the meeting, the barbecue sauce was still in a mason jar and there was only a sketch of how it would look bottled, along with a rough logo design.
After giving it serious thought, he asked longtime friend Mr. Ricciardi, who owns a landscaping business himself, to come on board.
They moved ahead with bottling the sauce, refined the logo to a mischievous looking devil with a wide-eyed grin and started sending out letters to small grocers in the hope of generating interest in the product.
One of the first tests of the sauces — which come in stupid hot, mid-evil and original — was at the annual Barrie Ribfest last summer.
They were equipped only with the sauces and some crackers.
“I thought I would be giving bottles away, but we sold 500 bottles,” Charlie said.
They also placed fourth in an amateur competition recently.
These days, you can find Charlie’s Sticky Sauce in local Dominion, A&P, Sobey’s and at various HomeSense and Winners chains across the country.
“Our little company has grown by word-of-mouth,” Charlie said.
He has this advice for other aspiring entrepreneurs.
“You have to believe in your product and you have to be able to sell your product,” Charlie said, adding he still has his nine original recipes laminated and stored away in a safe place.
For more information on Charlie’s Sticky Sauce, go to
www.charliesstickyfoods.com.