Malik Jamal is a salesman; he probably could sell anything. He's chosen to sell 5-ounce bottles of “no heartburn” hot sauce to passersby in the Loop, shoppers at TheHotSauceBoss.com, and licensing execs at the National Basketball Association, who recently signed a two-year marketing deal with him.
Mr. Jamal, 31, honed his promotional skills in the music business, working for a division of Universal Music Group in Chicago before taking classes at Columbia College Chicago. He moved to Florida in 2003 and eventually ditched music for food, selling plates of jerk chicken and barbecue out of a food truck in Miami's South Beach. When customers started asking for hot sauce, he turned to an uncle who ran a Miami-based maker of liquid vitamins for Central American and Caribbean markets. The uncle created a low-sodium hot sauce that did not use vinegar, to avoid triggering acid reflux.
Mr. Jamal took to the streets again, pitching hot sauce like musical acts back in Chicago. “I would walk up to tables where people were eating to sell hot sauce,” he says, “like the guy playing the violin.”
He returned to Chicago in 2009 and began selling the product downtown. He's the well-dressed man in a fedora asking people if they like hot sauce and carrying two bottles in each hand. Whenever the reply is yes, Mr. Jamal hands one over and asks for a $5 donation (the same price his three Hot Sauce Boss varieties sell for on his website).
His sales territory expanded eventually to the parking lots at the United Center, to capitalize on Chicago Bulls commentator Stacey King's “Give me the hot sauce” catchphrase. When someone suggested that he add a Bulls flavor, he thought bigger and went straight to the NBA.
Despite little retail presence—Hot Sauce Boss is available only in a few Chicago stores—the NBA's licensing department was impressed and anointed his product the league's official hot sauce. “He has a lot of passion and pride,” says Anne Hart, the league's senior director of licensing. “And we thought his business plan was well-thought-out.”
Mr. Jamal also has teamed up with Elk Grove Village-based Norman Distribution Inc., the company that puts Skinny Pop on grocery store shelves, and is negotiating with retail chains. He is talking, too, with the NBA's Minnesota Timberwolves to sell a strawberry hot sauce to concessionaires at the Target Center in Minneapolis.
Mr. Jamal knows he has only a couple of years to prove himself to the NBA and the retail industry, but he's not worried if the business fails to take off. “At the very minimum, I know I can sell hot sauce (on the street) every day,” he says. Spoken like the salesman he is.
