Keeping Portland Saucy
Kip Lindig and Stacy Moritz a/k/a Secret Aardvark! Have been supporting the JWF for 14 years. Here they are volunteering at JWF’s annual concert event The Next Waltz.
Secret Aardvark supports musicians, community – and Portland’s reputation as a food mecca
By Claire Levine
Scott Moritz won first-prize in a chili cookoff at 13. Over the years, he continued his love of creative cooking, mixed with his pursuit of travel and music and his entrepreneurial spirit.
When he became ill in 2008, The Jeremy Wilson Foundation reached out to offer help. Scott’s wife, Stacy Moritz, was employed as a nurse at the time, with a steady income and good health insurance, so the family felt they didn’t need the foundation’s assistance.
While they passed on the offer, Stacy has never forgotten that the foundation was there for them.
In 2009, after Scott’s death, Stacy took over management of Secret Aardvark Trading Company, the business she and Scott founded. And each year, she dedicates a portion of Secret Aardvark’s charitable contributions to The JWF’s Musician Health and Services Program. For many years, Secret Aardvark has been a primary sponsor of The Next Waltz, the foundation’s premier annual fundraising event.
The road to habanero sauce.
Many Portlanders knew Scott as the leading light of Scotland Barr and the Slow Drags, an award-winning American band. Scott and Stacy met Jeremy Wilson through Portland’s close-knit alt-music community.
In the 1990s, Scott co-founded Salvador Molly’s. Originally a tamale cart, the brick-and-mortar restaurant became a keystone of the Hillsdale neighborhood. It was noted for its whimsical entrees and delicious Caribbean-style concoctions. (Salvador Molly’s is still going strong under other ownership.)
After some years, Scott found himself more interested in creating new sauces than in the day-to-day production of restaurant food. After a year of experimenting, he found what he determined to be the perfect recipe for habanero sauce. With that, the Moritzes launched Secret Aardvark Trading Company.
They started out peddling single bottles at farmers markets. Legend has it that Scott sneaked a bottle of his habanero sauce into the employee break room at New Seasons – which resulted in an almost immediate wholesale order.
Aardvark nation.
Twenty years later, Stacy said, “We’re in every state in the union. We're in about 10,000 stores across the nation.” They sell to food service vendors, and about 20 percent of their product is sold through Amazon. They also have an international following.
Stacy reminds us that while these volumes seem huge to most of us, in the consumer-oriented food world, “We’re tiny. We’re going to be incredibly small for a long time – which is fine!”
The company has six staff people, including Stacy. She contracts for warehouse space, marketing, production and other operations so she can concentrate on taste and quality.
She now creates the sauces. And she won’t shoot the starting pistol on a new product until she deems it “Scott worthy.”
As for the taste-testing process, she said, “It depends on how many friends I have around at the time. I have frequently shown up at camping trips and other places saying, ‘Hey, I’ve got something new for you to taste.’
“I did one the other day that I put in a jelly jar. My friends were saying, ‘Strawberries?’ No, it was just a clean jar I happened to find.”
Giving us more than great sauces. Secret Aardvark dedicates at least 3 percent of its annual profits to local organizations. (In fact, this year their percentage exceeded 6 percent donations because of how much sauce they have donated to charitable causes.) They contribute products to auctions and fundraisers throughout the year and regularly support local nonprofits – from the Bay City Rollers to the ACLU.
At the end of every year, Stacy calculates how much the company has given away. “And then my best day is when I get to donate to a bunch of other charities that I really love.” And The JWF’s Musician Health and Services Program is a big one.
Like Scott, Stacy’s husband Kip Lindig is also a musician. “And” she said, “probably 80 percent of our friends are musicians.
“We’ve always been lucky to live in a place where music is such an important piece of the community – the fabric of the community. The Portland Metro Area is struggling a bit right now, and it’s been the food and music and art that has held this community together,” and is helping revitalize our regional vitality.
“It’s incredibly important to support music.”
And as a nurse, she understands medical needs and how devastating illness can be to an individual or a family – made worse when money becomes an issue. She is proud to be a sponsor of The Next Waltz and a supporter of The Musician Health & Services Program so more members of the music community can receive the financial help and navigation services they need.
So, is this sauce stuff really good?
Yes. Ask fans around the world. Recently, two groups of national consumers were asked to taste-test one of the products. One group was told who produced it, the other was not told.
Stacy said, “People in both groups were super excited. And what surprised me the most is that they were super excited about it being our sauce they were tasting! Because you know, I think of us as just a little sauce company out of Portland, Oregon. So that was a really fun result!”
Even the website is fun. Find great recipes, read great anecdotes – and if you order by Dec. 14, your presents will arrive by Christmas. (Secret Aardvark bottles are conveniently sized to fit in stockings.)
The JWF is proud to have the confidence of Secret Aardvark – and to be associated with terrific products that are putting Portland on the map.
You can join Stacy, Kip and the Secret Aardvark family in their support of the Musician Health & Services Program by becoming a one-time or monthly contributor. And sign up for our newsletter to learn about all the great events throughout the year featuring terrific local artists that also help support the foundation. You can say, “I’m with the band!”
