Hot Farm

The story of Hot Farm begins in 2011, with no business plan, no sauce recipe and no dream of a brand of its own. It begins at a family dinner, with a story Hristo happens to overhear.

At the table is Neycho Neykov. The conversation drifts back to the USA and the time around the 1994 football World Cup. You would expect his strongest memory to be about the football, but Neycho says that one of the things that struck him most over there were the hot peppers. He saw children eating them almost like sweets. He tried one too. The pepper was so hot that after the first bite he could barely catch his breath.

Hristo listens, and the particular kind of curiosity that sometimes won't let you sleep wakes up in him. He comes from a long line of gardeners. The land, the plants and the vegetables are his world. And that is exactly why the question won't leave him alone: "What are these peppers I know nothing about?"

That same evening, once he's home, he sits down at the computer and starts searching. A whole universe opens up in front of him: hundreds of varieties of hot peppers in different shapes, colours, aromas, flavours and degrees of heat. A world that has almost nothing in common with the familiar Bulgarian shipka pepper.

From that evening on, something in Hristo changes.

At first Hristo has no intention of making sauces. He isn't thinking about labels, shops or sales. He only wants to find out how far he can go. Can he, here in Bulgaria, with his own hands, grow the hottest and most unusual peppers in the world?

He starts collecting seeds and varieties, one after another. Curiosity turns into passion, and passion into a real collection. At one point more than 300 different varieties of hot peppers are growing on the farm and around his home.

So when people ask us today which came first, the pepper or the sauce, the answer is easy. At Hot Farm the pepper came first. First came the love of its character, of the fact that one pepper can be fruity, another smoky, a third grassy, a fourth almost sweet before the fire arrives. Heat was never the only goal. Hristo wanted to understand the flavour.

Hristo and Darina have been farming for years: growing seedlings, vegetables and herbs. They know what it means to get up early, to depend on the weather, to wait, to tend and sometimes to start all over again. But even for them, 300 varieties of hot peppers is a lot. And the obvious question follows: what do you do with so many wonderful, different, fresh peppers?

Hristo starts making sauces to show off the flavour of the pepper rather than hide it behind a complicated recipe. That's how the 100 ml sauces he developed are born. The basic recipe and process are the same, but every bottle has a different character, because a different variety speaks in it.

They contain nothing but peppers, a little salt and vinegar for flavour: no fruit, no vegetables and no dozens of spices to drown out the raw ingredient. And it's exactly in that simplicity that you can see how different two hot peppers can be.

When we process them, we remove the seeds and the inner membranes. It's slow, painstaking work, but for us it's part of respecting the product and of our aim for a flavour that is clean and carefully built.

The best family stories rarely begin with everyone agreeing. When Hristo catches the hot pepper bug, neither his wife nor his two daughters are convinced anything will come of it. To them it's his strange new passion. For him, little by little, it becomes a direction.

In 2012 and 2013 the man who spends his days in the field sits down at the computer in the evenings and starts building a website on his own. He learns as he goes. He writes, uploads photos, describes varieties and explains what he wants to create. He calls the place the first Hot Farm in Bulgaria.

The most striking thing is that already in 2014 Hristo describes almost everything the family will actually go on to do years later: hot sauces, jams, spreads, sweet products, pickles, spices and, one day, people coming to the farm to experience it.

It's one of those moments we look back on today with particular excitement. Because it's easy to believe in something once it's already a success. It's far harder to see it when it doesn't exist yet. Hristo saw it.

By 2016 their daughters have gone off to make their own way outside the family home. That's when Darina starts seeing Hot Farm differently. In what until then had mostly been Hristo's dream, she sees an opportunity of her own too: something the two of them can build together.

And they do, side by side. In four months they set up their own production space at home and reach a range of 39 products. On 7 October they open the Hot Farm online shop.

But their real shop in those days is the farmers' markets. There the two of them stand behind the table, talk to people, let them taste and tell them about every pepper. The brand grows the way their plants grow: slowly, with persistence, with care and with a great deal of personal effort.

In 2019 their daughters join the business. Shortly afterwards comes the pandemic, which turns the plans of so many families and companies upside down. For Hot Farm it becomes a moment of change too. The family rebrands completely, changes the way the brand looks and speaks, and starts developing it together.

What was once one man's passion is now the shared path of four.

Later they are joined by Stoyan, Elena's husband. Today he is Hot Farm's food technologist, and every product and every new development passes through his hands. After him comes Slavena's husband, who takes on a big part of business development, online sales and the digital presence.

And so Hot Farm becomes a family story in which everyone finds their place.

Today Hot Farm products can be found in more than 800 shops across the country, and they reach people beyond Bulgaria: in the USA, France and other European markets.

But behind those numbers, for us, stands something far more important. The proof that you don't have to start out in a big city, with a lot of capital or a ready-made formula for success. Sometimes you can start from a small village near Varna, from a family house, from a handful of seeds and from a question that won't leave you alone.

And if you're stubborn enough, if you work every day and if the people around you come to believe in the same dream, the borders start to move further away.