When Arsha Jones was pregnant with her fourth child, one of her biggest cravings was chicken wings with mambo sauce, a sweet, spicy condiment that became popular at Washington takeout restaurants a long time ago. “My husband’s job was to either drive me to Washington for about 30 minutes or [away]“Or he had to bring it back to our house,” Jones says. Entrepreneur.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Capital City Mambo Sauce. Arsha Jones.
Jones grew up having fun with Mambo Sauce in the Eighties and Nineties. It was “something that was just part of the community,” she recalls, and her roots lie in the area back to the late 60’swhen Wing-N-Things, a black-owned restaurant at seventh Street and Florida Ave NW, helped popularize it.
Over time, Jones’s cravings for mambo sauce became a little bit of a nuisance, so she decided to make her own. “Every two weeks or so, I would have one pot that I would use and make enough mambo sauce for one meal. And that was it; that was enough to satisfy my cravings,” she says.
“I opened a website and immediately started selling online.”
In those early days, Jones wasn’t trying to begin a business. She was making the sauce in batches for her family’s enjoyment—not with the goal of developing a saleable product. But with a background in website design and e-commerce, Jones soon began to wonder if there have been other individuals who would want easy accessibility to Mambo Sauce.
In 2011, Jones and her husband Charles founded a direct-to-consumer company: Mambo sauce from the capital.
“We never intended for it to be a retail product,” Jones says. “I would say it was a harder path to get smaller brands onto grocery shelves than it is today. There are so many programs and accelerators and things now—there was nothing like that back then. It wasn’t even a consideration. I pulled out a website and immediately started selling online.”
Jones didn’t grow up in an entrepreneurial family, and she says she was on their own when it got here to determining how one can grow her small, home-based business. Without outside money to fund her enterprise or a vast network to call on, she as a substitute took a grassroots approach. Jones scoured food market shelves for small bottled brands, “like local barbecue sauce,” and then emailed their owners.
“I’d say, ‘How did you do X? And how did you get it on the shelf?’” Jones explains. “And they’d just sit down and answer any questions I had. And I actually overcame some of those hurdles, at least in the beginning.”
“One of the things about not having resources… is that you just learn to do a lot of these things on your own.”
First, Jones focused on bringing Capital City Mambo Sauce to small retail stores in the community. “I relied a lot on smaller grocery stores,” Jones says. “Washington, D.C., is a place where you don’t have a lot of grocery stores, so people really rely on these small, mom-and-pop convenience stores—corner stores, as we call them. They’re similar to the bodegas in New York.”
Capital City Mambo Sauce was sold in 15 small shops, and the product placement in those small retail shops proved successful: Big grocery stores took notice when customers asked why the sauce wasn’t available on their shelves. That prompted local retailer Shoppers Food to contact Capital City Mambo Sauce—and ask what it might take to stock the coveted product.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Capital City Mambo Sauce
From there, the company continued to grow, eventually growing into a seven-figure brand available in greater than 3,000 retailers nationwide, including Walmart, Wegmans, Safeway, Costco and more.
Capital City Mambo Sauce has been growing at a regular 25% year-over-year pace with a multi-pronged retail strategy that features fast-food chains and sports arenas. The brand boasts partnerships with Papa John’s, KFC, Washington Commanders at FedExField and DC United at Audi Field.
Each retail partnership brings its own algorithm and regulations, which might be daunting, but Jones’ initiative has helped her successfully navigate them. “The learning curve is very steep,” she says.[But] “One thing about not having the resources, the access, the financial support is that you just learn to do a lot of these things on your own. That’s what my team and I did. We got a manual from Target that was 30 pages long. We read all 30 pages until we fully understood the processes.”
“We have our own culture, our own slang, our own style and of course our own food.”
According to Jones, Capital City Mambo Sauce began as a family business with just two employees, a husband and wife, and their 4 sons, which helped create a solid foundation for the brand’s continued success.
“I know it sounds cliché, but we all really do feel like a family,” Jones explains. “And because of that, we operate in a way where we all respect each other. There are values that we hold dear, and we always move forward together, making sure that everyone’s voice is heard, everyone’s consideration, and everyone’s treated fairly. That’s been beneficial to us because everyone is here because they truly love what they do.”
Now, Jones is wanting to share Washington with the world. He desires to dispel the notion that it’s just a place for politics and tourism — and use the mambo sauce to attract attention to the city’s vibrant community and culture.
“When you’re a resident here, [museums and monuments] “They’re not things that we think about,” Jones says. “We have our own culture, our own slang, our own style, and in fact our own food, which is largely hidden because of all the things else that is going on. So one of the things that excites me is ensuring that individuals outside of Washington, D.C., have a likelihood to get to know who we are.”