Hot sauces and spices are getting a Lloydminster upgrade as Kenny Mac is delivering his KM brand at local grocery chains and in Edmonton.
The local musician is a professional floor installer, but his passion for hot flavours, salt, pepper and garlic blend, and a brisket rub is occupying prime space on the grocery shelf.
“I have always loved hot food. My step-mom is from Fiji. Almost all the food that they cook is hot food,” says Kenny.
Growing up his stepmother cooked mainly Canadian food, but Kenny says it was a treat when she cooked her national cuisine.
“I just liked hot stuff like the curry dishes. I fell in love with spices.”
Over the years Kenny says he could not find the precise flavour that he was looking for in the store, so he started to make his own around 2006. Then around 2018 he upped his game by fermenting peppers.
“What you get from that is a really good tasting flavour and people turn that into hot sauce or sometimes they will just use the vinegar for cooking.”
He started filling up bottles and giving them away.
“And when it was empty they said, ‘We need more and more.’ It was time consuming to do but I decided to turn this into a hobby.”
In 2020, when business slowed over the pandemic months, he could not do any flooring, so he had more time to make hot sauces. With a partner, they came up with a design for the logo and the KM brand was stamped on the bottle.
Kenny started to check out the requirements to get his product in stores.
“When you immerse yourself in an industry you can’t help but learn.”
Culligan Water and Cliff Rose For Clothes stock the KM Brand, and four of the flavours are at Sobeys and Safeway in Lloydminster.
“There’s a Safeway and a Sobeys in Edmonton and one in Bonnyville as well. Local Meats by Paradise Hill has a few flavours, and Moose Country Lodge in north Saskatchewan,” says Kenny.
Five years on and word is getting out. The floor installation pays the bills, but the passion for spicy flavours is marinating Kenny’s desire to push the KM brand forward.
“Everybody has to eat, so why not a make a spice that will enhance what you are eating.”
The music with the Kenny Mac Band is providing the soundtrack for the multi-talented Lloydminster floor-installer who says the KM brand has a few fires yet in the works, including a barbecue sauce.
