When Arsha Jones was pregnant with her fourth child, one of her biggest cravings was chicken wings with mambo sauce, a sweet and tangy condiment that gained popularity decades ago in take-out restaurants. Washington, DC “It was my husband's job to either drive me to DC about 30 minutes (away), or he had to drive it back to our house,” Jones says. entrepreneur.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Capital City Mambo Sauce. Arsha Jones.
Jones grew up enjoying mambo sauce in the 1980s and 1990s. It was “something that was just part of the community,” she recalls, originally from the hangout. back in the late 1960swhen Wing-N-Things, a black-owned restaurant located at 7th and Florida Ave NW, helped popularize it.
Eventually, Jones' craving for mambo sauce became a bit inconvenient, so she decided to make her own. “About every two weeks, I had this pot that I used, and I would make enough mambo sauce for one meal. And that was it; that was enough to satisfy my cravings,” she says.
“I set up a website and immediately started selling online.”
In those early days, Jones wasn't trying start a business. She collected the sauce for her family's enjoyment – not with the intention of developing one marketable product. However, with a background in web design and e-commerceit wasn't long before Jones began to wonder if there might be other people out there who wanted easy access to mambo sauce.
So, in 2011, Jones and her husband, Charles, launched a direct-to-consumer business: Mambo sauce of the capital.
“We never intended this to be a retail product,” says Jones. “I would even argue that back then, there was a more difficult path to get smaller brands onto grocery store shelves than it is today. Today, there are so many programs and accelerators and things — back then there was none of that. It wasn't Not even a consideration I pulled up a website and started right away online sales.”
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Jones did not grow up in a family entrepreneurs and says she was on her own when it came to figuring out how to grow her small, home-based business. No outside money to finance her venture or a broad one The network instead, she took a grassroots approach. Jones scanned grocery shelves for small bottled brands, “like a local barbecue sauce,” and then emailed their owners.
“I'd say, 'How did X do? And how did you get on the store shelf?'” Jones explains. “And they would just sit down and answer any kind of question that I had. And that was really how I overcame some of those obstacles, at least in the beginning.”
“One thing about not having resources…is that you just learn to do a lot of these things yourself.”
First, Jones focused on getting Capital City's Mambo Sauce into small retail stores within the community. “I relied heavily on smaller grocery stores,” Jones says. “Washington, DC is a place that doesn't have many grocery stores, so people rely heavily on these small ones mom-and-pop-Convenience store style – corner stores, we call them. They're similar to New York bodegas.”
Capital City's Mambo Sauce was sold in 15 mom and pop stores, and product positioning in those small retailers proved successful: large grocery stores took note when customers asked why the sauce was not available on their shelves. That prompted local grocer Shoppers Food to contact Capital City Mambo Sauce — and ask what it would take to stock the desired product.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Capital City Mambo Sauce
From there, the business continued to grow, eventually transforming into a seven-figure brand available in more than 3,000 retailers nationwide, including Walmart, Wegmans, Safeway, Costco and more.
The Mambo sauce of the capital continues to constantly grow at a 25% year-over-year rate thanks to a multi-pronged retail strategy that spans fast food chains and sports arenas. The brand boasts partnerships with Papa John's, KFC, Washington Commanders at FedExField and DC United at Audi Field.
Each one retail partnership brings its own set of rules and regulations, which can be challenging, but Jones' self-starter mentality has helped him navigate them successfully. “The learning curve is very steep,” she says. “(But) one thing about not having the resources and the access and the financial support is that you just learn to do a lot of these things yourself. That's what my team and I did. We got a manual from Target that was 30 pages long . We read all 30 pages until we fully understood the processes.”
“We have our culture, our slang, our style and, of course, our food.”
The capital's Mambo sauce began as one family business with just a two-husband team — and some help from their four sons — helped create a solid foundation for the brand's continued success, Jones says.
“I know it sounds really cliche, but we all feel like family,” Jones explains. “And because of that, we operate in a way where we all respect each other. there are values that we hold dear, and we are always moving forward together in unison and making sure that everyone's voice is heard, everyone is considered, and everyone is treated fairly. That's been a benefit to us because everyone is here because they really love what they do.”
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Now, Jones can't wait to share Washington, DC with the world. It wants to dispel the notion that it is just a place of politics and tourism — and use mambo sauce to draw attention to the city's vibrant community and culture.
“When you're a resident here, (museums and monuments) aren't the things we think about,” Jones says. “We have our culture, our slang, our style and, of course, our food, which is mostly hidden because of everything else that's going on. So the only thing I'm excited about is making sure that people outside of Washington, DC has a chance to get to know who we are.”