news-record.com

GREENSBORO - Start with tomatoes, onions, garlic, cilantro.

Throw in a few nicknames for good measure.

Now you've got yourself some salsa.

Nicknames may not seem like an ingredient commonly used in making salsa, but at Sarah's Salsa, it's just another step in making their product special.

First, there's the Onion Engineer -- the brave soul who dices 125 onions a day.

Then there's the Salsa Heiress. That's company founder Sarah Ward's oldest daughter, Taylor.

Salsa Princess is Ward's youngest daughter, Ella.

Even the heavy equipment qualifies for a nickname. Big Helga is the industrial dicing machine, Spike the industrial blender.

It all combines to create a playful atmosphere that makes Sarah's Salsa tick.

"We're just silly," admits Katherine Meadows, a business partner.

Silly except for when it comes to making salsa. In less than four years, Sarah's Salsa has evolved from a shoestring operation based in Ward's cramped kitchen to 20 employees, a handful of partners and six flavors sold in 86 Fresh Market stores from Florida to Wisconsin.

"I didn't even have a food processor back then," Ward says. "Everything was chopped by hand."

Some things are still done that way today at the company's current facility in the kitchen of the old N.C. School for the Deaf.

Take Peggy Brutcher, who meticulously cleans, spins and chops cilantro.

"I wouldn't put anything in our salsa that I wouldn't eat myself," says Brutcher. "All of us are that way."

When Ward first dreamed of making salsa, she probably never imagined what else she might create -- bonds among the 20 workers who shared one thing: They were all young mothers needing part-time work.

"We're just housewives that need to make a little money," explains Robin Perkins, a mother of three.

As a young mother herself who drives a Volvo station wagon with a child seat in the back, Ward more than understands. She still ties a handkerchief over her hair and switches roles with her employees on the production line.

Of late, Ward and friends are exploring other opportunities. Two additional flavors of salsa are being sampled.

And negotiations are under way to have Sarah's Salsa offered at Triad minor-league baseball parks.

"I can't think of two things that go together better than baseball and salsa," Ward says.

As appealing as that may seem, Ward doesn't want Sarah's Salsa to expand too quickly.

"I don't see our salsa in large supermarkets," she says. "That's not our niche -- specialty food stores are where we belong. We don't want to grow so quickly we lose control of our product."