From pot-luck to store shelves: How a Utah family of 7 grew an unexpected salsa business
· KSL.comKEY TAKEAWAYS
- Nico and Lindsi Barber's salsa business started unexpectedly in 2023 in St. George.
- Nico's Fresh Salsa now sells in 150 stores across nine states, including Harmons.
- The Barbers emphasize family involvement and entrepreneurship in their successful salsa venture.
ST. GEORGE — When Nico and Lindsi Barber moved to St. George with their five kids in 2023, they had no intention of starting a successful salsa business. Three years later, Nico's Fresh Salsa is in 150 stores across nine states, proving that life doesn't always go as planned.
"Honestly, we both had full-time jobs, and it's not something we really thought of doing until the summer of 2023 when Lehi City was having its annual Lehi Round-Up," Lindsi Barber said.
Nico Barber made homemade salsa for family and friends over the years, and he developed the recipe as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the early 2000s.
"I went to Argentina on my mission, and as a kid who didn't know a lot, I thought I'd be eating tacos and burritos every day," he recalled. "It wasn't that way. They ate steak and pasta, so I was sorely disappointed — even though I love steak and pasta."
About a year and a half into his mission, he said he missed Mexican food most. So he found a resident of Chilean descent with a garden of cilantro and jalapeños, which he said were "impossible to find in Argentina."
"I said, 'Oh, my gosh! Can I have some of that?'" Nico Barber recalled. "She gave me some items from her garden, and I went to the corner grocery store and grabbed a few other things that I thought would be good in salsa, and I took it home and threw it all in a blender, and that's where my OG recipe came from."
That "OG" recipe spent the next 20 years being served at family and community potlucks and always got rave reviews, Nico Barber said. But he never intended to make a business out of it.
In the summer of 2023, however, he thought it would be fun to make some batches to sell at a local farmer's market in Lehi, where they were living at the time. He also said it would be a great experience to involve his kids and teach them entrepreneurial skills.
"We were looking for a way to teach our kids how to be an entrepreneur," he said. "That was really important when we decided to do this.
"I had also never made a large amount of salsa, so I had no clue what I was doing," Nico Barber added. "So, I whipped up what I thought we would sell in two days at the market ... and we sold out two days' worth of inventory in just a few hours on day one."
The Barbers knew people loved what they made, but with an imminent move to St. George for Nico's new job, they didn't have much time to devote to salsa, let alone starting a business.
Even so, not long after they landed in St. George, Nico and Lindsi reached out to Downtown Farmer's Market and began selling salsa in the fall of 2023. And much like the market in Lehi, the salsa sold out.
"I think at that moment, it was kind of our first realization that we really had something special," Lindsi Barber said. "It wasn't just friends and family; people actually really loved this salsa."
A leap of faith
For the next several months, Nico worked his day job and made salsa at night to prepare for the weekend farmer's market. They posted weekly pickups on an Instagram account, and they reached a point where they had to decide whether to pursue what they were now calling Nico's Fresh Salsa.
"We were thinking that maybe we could do this full-time, but we had no savings," Lindsi Barber said. "We were not financially prepared, but going on a prayer, we were like, 'OK, this feels like a gigantic leap of faith, but let's try.' We were honestly giving it to God and were going to just see what happened."
Nick quit his job, and the family went all-in. With late nights, long weekends, and time and financial sacrifices, they got their salsa into Davis Market in St. George. And when they saw the product start to fly off the shelves, they worked on getting into more stores.
Nico's Fresh Salsa now operates out of a full commercial kitchen and can be found in 150 stores across nine states. The salsa also recently made it into all 20 Harmons Grocery stores.
"We were really looking for a way to integrate spending more family time together and really just teach our kids how to grow a business," Nico Barber said.
The Barbers gave no secrets to the recipes of their now-six flavors. But they said that, looking back, they are really grateful for where their journey has taken them.
"It's been fun, amazing and so fun to watch Nico and do this with our family," Lindsi Barber said. "It's been neat to see his passion come out. It's been a special journey."
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.