Sure the name of this event is called the Louisiana Hot Sauce Expo, but it is actually 3 shows in 1. Imagine buying 1 show and getting 2 shows for free. Sounds like a deal and a 1/2 at the general admission price of $7 for 1 day or $10 for 2 days. Tickets can be purchased in advance at those discounted prices HERE. So what 3 events are you getting for your ticket?
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Straight from the Louisiana Hot Sauce Expo comes the 1st annual World Hot Sauce Awards with one of the coolest trophies ever created for this industry. Check her out..
Pretty isn’t she? A big thank you goes out to Dana Romero for allowing me to post these results as soon as the awards dinner was over. Another huge thank you goes out to our own Ken Alexander of www.FieryWorld.com for formatting the results for us. Kudos to you both. I want to also congratulate all the winners and thank all the entries for supporting these great awards. It is very hard to not only put on a 1st year event, but also bring in a whole new award to the community. Dana has worked hard on this event, and we here at ILIS hope it is a very successful show for the ages. Much success to all the vendors and sponsors who are putting in their trust in Dana. Now let us get to the winners…
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Introducing The World Hot Sauce Awards Category Trophies. 60 of these beauties will be awarded Friday July 18 to the best in the World. There is still time to enter so let’s make this happen go to www.worldhotsauceawards.com and enter right now. If you have already entered THANK YOU and if you haven’t “What ya waitin’ for?” Entries MUST be Postmarked by July 1, 2014 regardless where you are in the world.
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The weight of any event ultimately falls on the promoter, but there are so many factors in making an event a successful one that it can fail even if all the pieces are in place to make it a big hit. Bad weather can ruin an event or the very threat of it can crush an outdoor show. The economy is always fragile enough to discourage people from paying the admission price on something they are lukewarm in attending in the first place. Let alone getting there and just grazing and sampling at each booth, saving their money for more important things than the addition of a spicy product. What about the lack of support from the vendors? After last years two big show flops with Zestfest Midwest and Chile Pepper Extravaganza, a vendor might not feel too comfortable going to a first year show. Many of us know there was extreme efforts on the good people at Chile Pepper Extravaganza to make that show be more than it ended up being. Yet, in the end, people just did not come, and much money was lost in the investment from the promoters and th0se vendors that took the risk in supporting the show.
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Talking about stretching something out for all it’s worth. I am sorry I am not writing this faster, but we had some issues once again with our web host and had to relocate again. There was some malicious code that was hacked into the site and it was causing endless spam to be sent to site, causing ILIS to need more and more space. Outside of paying $200/month for more space, I had another benefactor step up and get me another free web server to host my site. It is slower, but it is free, and for now it is all we got until I start paying for something bigger and better. My deep appreciation goes out to those that have helped me through the last month’s ordeal with my site. Thank you so much for all the help you all have provided me.
So let us continue where I left off, in New Iberia with the Sauce Goddess…
September 24, 2013
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September 23, 2013
The Sauce Goddess, Jennifer Reynolds and I headed from Stafford, Texas to Lafayette, Louisiana, (Home of the Ragin’ Cajuns), to meet up with Dana Romero for lunch. For those of you that do not know Dana Romero, he is the man in charge of creating the 1st ever Louisiana Hot Sauce Festival. He wanted to show us a good time, treat us for a nice Cajun lunch and get some feedback on the future festival grounds which will kick off on July 19-20, 2014. I have been exchanging messages with Dana for a few months, but I never had met him before. As I told you in the previous parts of my road trip, he volunteered as a salsa judge. Not only that he helped me quite a bit in adding up the judging scores of all 70 entries. With 7 judges, that is 490 scores to tabulate. I was extremely grateful for the help he gave me.
Jen and I each had our own transportation, and once Dana told us where to meet, we set off to meet at PreJeans Restaurant in Lafayette, LA. I let Dana choose my meal, as I wanted to have something Cajun and special. He hit a home run, and it was a dish I am not sure I would’ve ordered reading it from the menu. The dish was called Catfish Grand Chenier, and it one of the best meals I had on my 2 week trip. Here is the description as it is written on the Prejeans’ menu along with a picture of the dish.
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September 20, 2013
I owe a lot of my sanity on this trip to the Sauce Goddess, Jennifer Reynolds. I was still having personal issues that I could not drop, and she told me to focus on where I was and have a good time with the people around you. Jennifer and I shared hotel rooms in Houston, TX as well as New Iberia and Lafayette, LA. We did the tourism thing in Louisiana and I had a great time with her company. Thanks very much Jen, you were an awesome travel mate. Our Friday schedule immediately became a bit sketchy because of the weather. It was raining and it was going to get worse and worse as a big storm was heading our way. Friday was setup day at the Stafford Centre for the Houston Hot Sauce Festival, so it was a matter of choosing the best time to dance between the raindrops.
Both Jen and I decided to visit the new iBurn brick and mortar hot sauce store before helping her setup her booth. The look of the store was amazing. So clean and professional looking. The murals were so very artistic. See the pic at the top for the outside mural and part of the inside mural is below. I really liked the way the bottles were child-protected by these small metal bar guards. While that was good against bottles tipping, the appearance was extremely sharp and appealing. Proprietors, as well as newlyweds, James and Amy Beck/Wreck had started selling products last year online and having such a widely successful show close by, they are going to support the festival by bringing in some of the vendors that appear. The idea is to tell the attendees at the show if you like the vendor’s products you will be able to reload at iBurn. Many of the vendors at the show gave away iBurn postcards to push home that point. Good marketing.
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