Hot Sauce with a Mission

Blog: Hot Sauce with a Mission

Underestimate Drew Davis at your own peril!

In 2023, the 18-year-old entrepreneur launched Crippling Hot Sauce, a new St. Louis-based business that sells – you guessed it – hot sauces. Davis started the company because “when life gives you cerebral palsy, you make hot sauce.”

Davis, who was born with CP, created a business model for Crippling Hot Sauce for a high school class assignment. When his teacher told him his concept was unrealistic, Davis was determined to prove her wrong. Using $3,000 he had saved from birthday and Christmas gifts, he began making and selling his sauces in local stores. Currently, you can also purchase the sauces on Davis’s website and on Amazon for $9.99 each.

By naming his company “Crippling,” Davis wanted to make a point. “I feel strongly about this name because as much as it’s gotten better, I’ve always felt like people with disabilities get a little special treatment kinda on the baby-ish side,” said Davis in an interview with a local TV station “I wanted to show people that a lot of us have a sense of humor. And with Crippling Hot Sauce, what I always try to explain to people is there’s a lot of difference in the word ‘crippled’ and ‘crippling.’ Crippling is an expression, crippled is a derogatory term.”

Davis also gave a lot of thought to the names of his sauce flavors which include “Limping” (medium hot), “Crippling Agony” (hot), “Just for the Parking” (mild) and “Special Treatment” (smoky bacon).

So far, Davis has sold hundreds of thousands of bottles of the highly-rated sauces. He also sells “Crippling” merchandise such as T-shirts and sweatshirts. Sauces are available in bundles of three, five and six. Customers can choose between the Crippling Decisions Variety Pack (5 bottles); Half a Dozen Handicaps (6 bottles); and the Triple Cripple (3 bottles.) For every bottle sold, Davis donates 5% to cerebral palsy research.

The young entrepreneur is philosophical about his success. “I live my life like a story, one page at a time. I treat my doubters like an antagonist in the story and go from it that way.”

Why not gift the spicy food lovers in your life a bottle or a bundle of bottles for the upcoming holiday season? Check out thecripplingcompany.com for more information.