HUMBLE BEGINNINGS & GRAND AMBITIONS
Jalapa Jar’s recipe was first crafted among friends in a kitchen in Austin, Texas in the early 2000s. Joel, then in culinary school, experimented with flavors until he achieved a salsa that was perfectly balanced.
Over the next few years, the salsa developed a following from Texas to New York, where Tommy had relocated and connected with his cousin Steve Smith, who became instantly hooked. The two of them continued to share their almost-famous recipe among friends, one bowl at a time from their Brooklyn Heights apartment.
To ensure they had the most authentic recipe, they consulted Joel, who shipped some jars from Texas to New York. Upon taste testing, immediately the magic of the salsa was gone. To prevent it from spoiling during transit, Joel had pasteurized the recipe, presuming the three would need to forge the traditional path for making salsa and go shelf-stable — suddenly they realized they lost the very essence of what makes Jalapa Jar…JALAPA JAR.
The three concluded that if they were going to share Jalapa Jar with the world, they needed to do it right, no matter how great the challenge might be.
It had to be fresh.
Making it in New York
Launching a product unlike anything else on the market means doing what no one else in the market is doing.
In 2018, the quality of the product was speaking for itself. With minimal marketing efforts, Jalapa Jar was a category disrupter, eagerly challenging the status quo of store-bought salsa, proving fresh could be made & distributed in a commercial capacity.
Mirroring the company’s adventurous and ambitious spirit, the team opted not to outsource manufacturing to grow into the demands of major retail.
Instead, they built a kitchen of their own.
It was here where they developed a proprietary process that was perfected and verified over several years to effectively capture the vibrancy of that homemade taste and achieve a 16-week shelf life that would allow them to distribute nationally, reaching across the country - from the Brooklyn Navy Yard to Hollywood, even reaching the shores of Hawaii - with a truly fresh, preservative free, delicious salsa.
This led to Jalapa Jar’s expansion from regional specialty stores and into Whole Foods, which singled out ‘refrigerated, fresh snacks’ as a top trend to watch in 2020.
Crafted by Texans but made in Brooklyn’s Navy Yard, Jalapa Jar is now the most widely loved and distributed fresh salsa brand in the country. From coast to coast, Jalapa Jar is on a mission to prove that fresh salsa can be enjoyed everywhere without compromise.
Hey, if we can make it here in New York, we can make it anywhere.
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Handcrafted in small batches
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Fresh produce
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Fire-roasted
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Balanced flavor
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No additives or preservatives
