Hi, I'm Rowan.

Rowan Moynihan receiving his Diplome de Cuisine at Le Cordon Bleu Paris with the chef brigade
Diplome de Cuisine, Le Cordon Bleu Paris.

I came up with VIOLET in 2022, when I was living in Miami. I wanted to make a pineapple habanero sauce, but the delivery driver brought scotch bonnets by mistake. I used them anyway. Pineapple and scotch bonnet was good, but it wasn't quite right. Being born and raised in New Jersey, I happened to have blueberries in the fridge. I added them, and everything clicked. The sauce came out purple and better than anything I had planned.

I started bottling it for the doormen and the people who worked in my building. They kept asking for more.

The original VIOLET prototype bottle, Miami 2022, with a typed label reading pineapple blueberry scotch bonnet hot sauce
The first bottle. Miami, 2022.

I ended up completing the nine month cuisine course at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. When I came back to the recipe expecting to find the flaws, it held up. That's when I decided to make it real.

The Sauce

VIOLET is a pineapple, blueberry, and scotch bonnet hot sauce. Vegan, gluten-free, no food coloring. Naturally purple from the blueberries.

Each bottle is 5 oz and shelf-stable until opened.

The Maker

Made in small batches by Kensington Food Company in Philadelphia, a veteran-owned co-packer that handles every bottle with the same care I put into the recipe.

My brother Joe and I picked up the first run from Kensington ourselves. My truck was in the shop and I was too antsy to wait for it, so I talked Joe into breaking in the old Dodge pickup he had just bought. It started raining on the way home, so we stopped at a gas station and covered every case with the only thing they sold, tiny kitchen trash bags. It took about thirty minutes. A tarp would have taken one. Joe was not thrilled. Every label made it.

The first run of VIOLET covered in trash bags in a pickup truck bed during a rainstorm
First run coming home. The trash bags worked.

What's Next

VIOLET is the first release. More flavors are coming, but I'm not in a rush: every sauce has to earn its bottle.

Try VIOLET →