After a productive year, local brothers Bryan and Jeff Gill aim to sell sauce to surrounding states
By Mario Carr EBS CONTRIBUTOR
Bryan and Jeff Gill moved to Big Sky in 2016 and brought with them a passion for locally grown foods. Bryan previously ran a small business in Vermont, selling hot sauce, ketchup, mustard and other condiments under cottage food law.
Now, the brothers are celebrating 10 years of operating Beehive Bros Hot Sauce in Big Sky, and they’ve increased production year after year. It was a challenge at first to create spices made entirely from peppers grown in Montana, but now all five flavors are sourced entirely from peppers grown in the state.
They believe in bringing local spice to Montana kitchens, and that means using local produce.
“From what we’ve seen, hands down, the best quality chilli peppers we get are the ones that have been grown locally. And a big part of that is transportation time,” Bryan said.
The Gills were able to get in touch with local farms after connecting with the Western Montana Growers Co-op at a Montana State University food fair. Now, between Harlequin and Five Fox Farms in the Moiese Valley, the brothers source 100% of their peppers from Montana.
“At first it was a challenge to source some of our peppers locally,” Bryan said. “But then as we grew and started communicating more directly with some farms in Montana, particularly Harlequin organic produce in Arlee, they started growing all of our peppers.”
By working directly with local farms, the brothers believe their peppers are in the best condition possible when it’s time to make the sauce. As proponents of local farm systems, the Gills believe a shorter chain of distribution leads to higher quality foods, because everyone involved is more passionate about the product.
“Like Harlequin Farms, it’s their peppers, they’re putting in the love to grow it. And then Western Montana Growers Co-op… they care about all of their farmers… And then it gets to us and we care about our hot sauce. So now the only people touching [the produce] are people who actually care about the quality of that produce,” Jeff explained.
Last year, the brothers bought over 1,500 pounds of peppers for their hot sauce, and are expecting to use even more this year. From August through November the farms are able to produce over 100 pounds of peppers a week, extending their season with the help of heated greenhouses. The brothers explained that the farms are thankful for the brothers’ commitment to buying a large amount of locally grown peppers, and that the pepper plants themselves are conducive to growing other crops as well. While the plants are small in the spring, other crops can be planted alongside them, and once they have been harvested, a fast growing winter crop can be placed in their stead.
Avid snowboarders, the Gills find their hot sauce business to be conducive to their lifestyle. With production being wrapped up by December, the brothers can ride as much as they want through the winter, while they prepare their pallets of sauce bottles for distribution each week.
“The discussion was, how do we run a business where we can ski as much as possible, be on the mountain whenever we want, and sourcing our peppers locally really lends itself to that,” Bryan said. Currently, Jeff still works as an accountant for Big Sky Resort, and Bryan drives shuttles for Skyline Big Sky Connect.
When it comes to running a business as brothers, Bryan and Jeff are able to navigate family life and business life well—it’s not for everyone, Jeff explained.
“We both have the personalities where we can say something business-wise, and we can disagree, but then we can just go have dinner at each other’s place and not have that disagreement carry over to our personal life,“ Jeff said.
In Big Sky, Beehive Bros Hot Sauce can be found for sale at the Hungry Moose and Roxy’s and is served at Yeti Dogs, Shedhorn Grill and Headwaters Grill. With the help of Quality Food Distributors out of Bozeman, the brothers’ sauce is sold all throughout Montana. The Gills are currently working with a food broker to push their product regionally to Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah, and are thankful for their commercial kitchen and storage space in Belgrade, which should make reaching other states easy due to their close proximity to I-90.
“We’re hoping to get much more regional, and start ramping up production even more now,” Jeff said.
