Our story

Bold flavor. Real consequences.

I'm Eli Perez. My love of hot sauce started in Puerto Rico. These five sauces were created in Royal Palm Beach, Florida.

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Eli Perez, founder of Bad Decision Hot Sauce, with the five bottles in Royal Palm Beach, Florida

The phrase

A bad decision.

Every time I reached for a store-bought hot sauce, my mother told me it was a bad decision — because it wasn't made with fresh ingredients.

She was Puerto Rican and she could cook. The whole family ate at her table, and nobody ever had notes. So she wasn't being subtle, and she wasn't wrong.

That line stuck with me long enough to end up on a label.

Bottles of Puerto Rican pique lined up on a weathered green table, whole red and orange hot peppers steeping in vinegar

Where it started

It started with pique.

When I was living in Puerto Rico I made pique — the vinegar-based hot condiment that sits on tables all over the island. Small hot peppers and garlic steeped in white vinegar with oregano and peppercorns, and chunks of pineapple dropped in to ferment, so the bottle gets hotter the longer it sits.

That was the first thing I ever made that people asked me for again, and it is where all of this comes from.

These five were created in my Royal Palm Beach kitchen and are professionally manufactured for us in Jacksonville, Florida. Took The Bet, the jalapeño, came first. Then I kept experimenting, and one bottle turned into five — mild through extreme, so there is one for everybody at the table.

The journey

Five bottles, five decisions.

Start mild. Keep going. Nobody is timing you.

First Mistake garlic hot sauce bottle with garlic bulbs and ingredients on a dark background

Garlic

First Mistake — Garlic Hot Sauce

Where it starts.

Heat: Mild

View sauce $12.00

The scale is our own ordering of the five sauces, mildest to hottest. It is a flavor guide, not a measurement.

What we care about

Three things, held to.

01

Created in Royal Palm Beach

Recipes developed in Royal Palm Beach. Produced and bottled in Jacksonville, Florida.

02

It started with pique

Peppers and garlic in vinegar, the way it is done in Puerto Rico. That is where the standard came from.

03

An honest scale

Five levels, labelled plainly on every bottle, so nobody is guessing what they just poured.

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Make your own bad decision

This is new. So far the only people who have tried these are friends and family. You would be early.

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