Blue Bull Rodeo Sauce: USU students add flavor to Cache Valley

Kimball Goss and Derrill Merrill, a pair of Utah State University students, are working to make their spicy product a part of both USU and Cache Valley’s cuisine.

The idea for Blue Bull hot sauce came to the freshmen students when the USU Entrepreneurship Club announced their annual $100 Startup Challenge last fall.

“I had been watching this show on YouTube called ‘Hot Ones,’ where they invite celebrities on to eat hot wings and they have this lineup of hot sauces,” Goss said. “I found out there’s this whole culture around hot sauces that people will follow and that they like to try different flavors.”

Because Goss and Merrill didn’t know of any hot sauces in Cache Valley, they thought a sauce with USU connections would be perfect for the startup competition.

They just had to come up with their unique flavor.

“That was the fun part,” Merrill said.

First, Goss and Merrill looked at hot sauce recipes online and examined ingredient labels to see what is commonly used in hot sauces. After experimenting with different mixtures at Merrill’s home in Alpine, Utah, they came up with three different flavors of hot sauce.

The duo brought these concoctions to USU’s Logan campus to allow students to taste test and give feedback on them.

“Heat is definitely important because it’s a hot sauce, but, more than anything, it’s the flavor they really want,” Merrill said.

Goss and Merrill took what they learned from the taste tests to create their first product, Blue Bull Rodeo Sauce. It has proven to be quite popular.

“We sell out every time we make a batch. We’ve sold everything we’ve made so far,” Merrill said.

Customers have reported using the sauce on various foods, including breakfast burritos, eggs and, as a surprise to the creators, Little Caesars pizza.

Because of the popularity of the sauce, Goss and Merrill are working to move their operations to an incubator kitchen at Bridgerland Technical College to increase their capacity.

“All of the bottles we have sold or that we currently have are literally homemade,” Goss said. “They were made in my kitchen because I have a pretty big stove.”

According to Merrill, the target market of the Blue Bull sauce and brand is Western culture. Because of this, they are trying to focus their business on rodeos and farmers markets this summer.

“There’s Asian hot sauces, there’s Mexican hot sauces, there’s a lot of Southern hot sauces, but there’s no hot sauce that is specifically Western. So, that’s the target market we’re trying to hit,” Merrill said.

According to Kimball, the hardest part of selling their product is that people tend to have a go-to hot sauce already. Their goal in attending public events is to allow people to try the sauce for themselves and hopefully turn them into a customer.

The entrepreneurs also hope to get their product into Cache Valley restaurants and increase their online presence. Currently, the business has a website and Instagram profile.

“We’re a Logan company and we’re really passionate about USU itself and its students,” Goss said. “We’re trying to add to the culture as much as we’re trying to start a business here.”

—alek.nelson@aggiemail.usu.edu

@nelsonalek