Meet Eric Friedman | Co-Hounder and Executive Chef – Mountain Dog Sauce Company

We had the good fortune of connecting with Eric Friedman and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Eric, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
It all started back when Reagan was 6 or 7 years old. Like many first-born daughters, she was always ready to take over the world and so after a couple years of always going with Mom to buy hot sauce for Dad for holidays, she decided rather than giving money to someone else, she could do this on her own.

That led to a number of years collaborating in the kitchen, perfecting three different recipes that were given to friends and family for holidays and fun, always getting a positive reception and further encouragement. Throwing caution to the wind, we decided to make a real run at this in late 2022, developing packaging and working to bring Mountain Dog Sauce Company to market. Between the opportunity to give back to a cause that is incredibly important to us as well as the chance work for ourselves doing what we love, our family-run small-batch, small-town hot sauce company has become a dream realized.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.

What we’ve learned from our own journey and the entire maker community is how many different ways there are to express yourself . We’ve been incredibly inspired being around so many creative people in our journey and for us to share our craft this way has been amazingly positive. While we have worked so hard on developing our sauces, we’re still always in awe when people taste our sauces and enjoy them and buy them. We never saw ourselves doing this and so we’re very humble about any success and adoration that we’ve received.

Within the hot sauce category there are some just stunningly talented chefs and creators. We don’t have any professional training, just a ton of hard work and dedication and desire to do something good and have fun with it. But to see our sauces on shelves next to some of the creations by chefs that we have incredible respect for is still a “pinch me” moment.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?

We’re a Lyons-based company and family and we couldn’t love it here more. This community has been an amazing fit for our family, from the people to the outdoor opportunities to the schools and restaurants – it’s an amazing little town.

For anyone coming to Boulder or Rocky Mountain National Park or a trip to the Front Range, we highly recommend spending day or a week here in Lyons. From world-class hiking and biking trails to fishing and tubing on the St. Vrain River to amazing town parks, you can immediately immerse yourself in the best of what Colorado has to offer.

Our shopping and restaurants are top notch too, all of them locally owned by people who are part of this community. We love shopping at Solace and Uniquely Lyons for gifts and tons great kitchen and home goods that inspire us in the kitchen every day. For dining, we’re always at the St. Vrain Market getting sandwiches, or tacos at Mojo Taqueria, followed by an ice cream at the Lyons Dairy Bar. These are must-visits when you come to Lyons.

But this is a music town at its core, and our favorite places to see live music and also enjoy some of the best craft beers in the world are Mainstage Brewing and Oskar Blues. We’re so spoiled to have all these amazing places in this little town of ours, not to mention Planet Bluegrass right here.

And, of course, we have to brag about the dog park, which is enormous and has incredible views and where we spend a ton of our time.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?

There are so many people who have been integral in helping us get to where we are today, but this is ultimately all about making a difference in our community and the world. So the biggest shoutouts here go to our dogs, Dixie and Mocha, who are both rescues and have inspired us to donate a percentage of our profits to the movement for Nationwide No-Kill Animal Shelters by 2025. We have partnered with BestFriends.org on this mission as well as contributed to various local causes that enable us to drive toward this vision.

Beyond that, we had some early retail partners and friends like Laura Levy and Neil Sullivan in Lyons who supported us from the beginning and gave us a space to sell our sauce and tell our story.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mtndogsaucecompany

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/89556583

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mtndogsaucecompany

Other: https://mtndogsauceco.etsy.com/