The pandemic exacerbated much-needed life changes for many, and that’s when Heather Dewey and Paul MacDonald decided to head north. Our next barbecue thanks them for it.
The couple was living in southern Ontario and relocated to Noelville, south of Sudbury, bringing their Lady Cobraa sauce business with them.
“As the kids got older and had lives of their own, we started to gradually head north and landed here in 2021,” Dewey said. “The bottles, recipes and hot peppers came with us."
The couple rent a house attached to 80 acres of property with a large garden to grow a variety of pepper for the sauce mixtures.
The pepper-growing venture began in the south in a subdivision where Heather had grown so many, she started gifting them to friends and family in the form of sauces.
“That’s when I learned that my sister put my sauces on the online selling forum Etsy,” she said. “At first I was shocked and then she said ‘Why are you mad at me? I am making you money and now they want more sauces’.”
The business name came from a Green Day Song they liked as well as the online gaming name they used when the Cobra with one A was taken already. The name stuck and works well with the heat quotient.
In its infancy, there were only three sauces. Cobraa’s Venom was one of those sauces. It’s chock-full of Carolina Reaper peppers, ghost peppers, Hot Hungarian peppers and Scotch Bonnet peppers. It’s the spiciest sauce they make and is even coated on the Suicide wings at Cousin Vinny’s Restaurant and Bar in Hanmer.
The business now features 14 varying sauces, including a collaboration bottle with Bucky’s BBQ Blends, featured in last week’s Let’s Eat foods column.
Bucky’s sugar free “What’s the Dill” spice has been combined with Lady Cobraa’s “That White Stuff.” It’s morphed into "That Dill!cious White Stuff!"
Watch a video on the sauce below:
Dewey loves hot peppers and gravitates to bold flavours like The Naughty and Nice. It’s a 12 ounce sauce that combines Scotch Bonnet peppers, carrots, onion and roasted garlic. She says It’s perfect for wings, fish, chicken and rice.
“It’s an amazing flavour with a nice heat that doesn’t burn your face off,” she adds.
Dewey amps it up when making a chilli with the Fruit and Fyre sauce. That sauce features mangoes and the Carolina Reaper, which holds the World record for hottest pepper in the world.
MacDonald, on the other hand, sits at the barbecue sauce side of the table. The barbecue sauce with Chipotle jalapenos offers a smoky flavour that was revamped last year by the couple.
It was originally made for pork ribs and its perfection, he said.
Over the course of the last year, the pair have been selling their line at the Sudbury farmer’s market. MacDonald says word of mouth and putting a face to a name is paying off.
“At first no one knew who we were,” he said. “Now people come looking specifically for us. Specialty items like our sauces do well at specialty spots like markets, especially when we offer samples.”
Dewey says the measure of success is in the orders and the fact that their little house is running out of room.
“We used to buy onions in five-pound bags, and now are buying them in 50-pound bags, so that is a good sign,” she adds.
The products are also available at the French River Trading Post and at Great Escape Cabins in Alban.
To see the Lady Cobraa inventory and learn more about the saucy business, visit the website.
It can also be found on Facebook under Lady Cobraa’s Next Level Sauces.
Anastasia Rioux is a writer in Greater Sudbury. Let’s Eat! is made possible by our Community Leaders Program.
