Local Products

Co-Op Sauce Moving to Rogers Park, To Become Private Company

Photo: courtesy Co-Op Sauce

A couple of years ago Co-Op Hot Sauce was a homemade product with Kinko’s-printed labels which you could only find at places like the Logan Square Farmer’s Market. Mike Bancroft, co-founder of Co-Op Image, a nonprofit arts and culinary education program in Wicker Park and Humboldt Park, launched the hot sauce as a fundraiser for the group, using peppers they grew themselves in their co-op garden. As Gapers Block reports, Co-Op Hot Sauce has taken off in a big way since then and outgrown where it’s been made (the kitchen of Ukrainian Village’s Darkroom Bar) and the output of Co-Op Image’s own gardens. Now Bancroft has turned Co-Op Hot Sauce into a separate for-profit company pledging 50 percent of its profits to Co-Op Image, and he says he’s hired several former and current students to work there. And it’s taken a space in Rogers Park which will be shared with Anne Kostroski’s bakery Crumb and The Stew Supper Club, which Bancroft and Kostroski do together. [Gapers Block]

Co-Op Sauce Moving to Rogers Park, To Become Private Company