A college student in Las Vegas has built a nationally distributed hot sauce company out of recipes his grandmother taught him in Guadalajara, Mexico. Max Maroe said he started cooking at age 5, learning at his grandmother’s side before she eventually shared her family’s hot sauce recipes with him.
Maroe launched his brand, adding his own twists to those recipes, in May 2023, when he was just 16 years old. He said the venture began as a way to challenge himself and try something outside his usual routine.
“I don’t know, I wish I could ask grandma if I did a good job,” Maroe said. “But I taste it, and I think of, like, my grandma whenever I, like, try hot sauce.”
His grandmother remains central to the brand’s identity; Maroe said he thinks of her nearly every time he samples his own product. That connection has helped push the sauce well beyond the kitchen where it started. It is now sold nationwide, including through Amazon and Maroe’s own website, and it carries an FDA label that has allowed him to move into larger-scale production.
“So, I can actually, like, commercialize it and actually like produce it on a larger scale so I can sell it — with the FDA label — and, like, retail spaces, online,” Maroe said.
Maroe said the early stages of building a business are the right time to take risks, arguing that young entrepreneurs benefit most from making mistakes while the stakes are still small. “You’ve got to start making the mistakes now while you’re small so that later on you’ll be prepared,” he said.
He is currently studying food science and said he plans to expand his product lineup and develop new recipes beyond hot sauce in the years ahead.
