There’s a picture that exists somewhere of Starr Edwards in the early days of Bitchin’ Sauce: behind a closed door in a busy house, infant asleep on the bed, laptop on her knees, trying to teach herself QuickBooks. Nobody was paying her to do that, just a recipe, a booth at a farmers market, and a list of repeat customers that kept getting longer.
Building a company while raising kids
The company dates back to a San Diego farmers market in 2010. Recipe base: almonds, lemon juice, garlic, nutritional yeast, soy sauce, oil. That’s the original recipe, nothing synthetic propping it up. Starr and her husband Luke ran the operation out of a farmers market tent and their home kitchen, blending and packing and selling. The week after giving birth, she was back making sauce. Not a metaphor.
That detail tends to get buried in the business narrative, but it probably shouldn’t. It says more about how this company was actually built than any revenue chart. Every early-stage founder has a moment where the business demands everything and so does the family, and the only option is to do both badly for a while and hope something holds. Starr’s version of that involved a sleeping baby and accounting software. Most people would have picked one or the other. She picked both.
The year everything nearly collapsed
By 2015 the company had started getting into real retail spots. Things were finally moving in the right direction. Then a business separation emphasized that all the financial risk and liability was on Starr’s shoulders. The brand was looking at potential bankruptcy.
She didn’t sell. Didn’t bring in someone who would have reformulated the product to make it cheaper. She bootstrapped through it, kept the recipe, kept showing up. Glamorous isn’t the word for any of it. Relentless is closer. And the company only survived because she was.
Childcare as a business decision, not a perk
Most founder benefit stories start with a number. This one starts with a room. Before Bitchin’ Kids became a reimbursement program, it was actual on-site childcare, a real physical space where parents could clock in knowing their kids were close by in a loving, educational environment. Parents could stop in during lunch and spend time with them. Something unexpected came out of that proximity: genuine community between colleagues. Kids growing up alongside each other, parents becoming friends, the kind of workplace connection that no team-building event ever produces.
When the company moved toward a remote workforce, the program moved with it. The physical space became $7,500 a year in non-taxable childcare reimbursement per employee, so working parents could stay present for their kids without having to choose between that and their job. Since 2019, the company has offered over $1.6M through the program, with the total benefits landing at $15,845 per employee annually.
Voluntary turnover at Bitchin’ Sauce is 16.4%. The food manufacturing average is closer to 25%. Forty percent of the team has passed four year tenures. When a founder spends $1.6M on childcare before most companies spend anything, the retention numbers tend to follow.
What the numbers look like now
$56M in peak annual revenue. You can find the product at Costco, Target, Kroger, Whole Foods, Sprouts, over 15,000 locations at this point. More than twenty flavors, all from that same California almond base, with new products on the way. Family-owned, So-Cal production.
Starr Edwards built this while raising 5 children, surviving a business separation, and refusing to change a recipe that makes manufacturing significantly harder than it needs to be. Then she took $1.6M and put it toward making sure the parents on her team could thrive as parents, too. Is there a better way to run a company, or is this it?
About Bitchin’ Sauce
Bitchin’ Sauce is a family-owned, Carlsbad, California-based brand founded in 2010 by Starr and Luke Edwards. The company pioneered the almond-based dip category and has grown from local farmers markets to national distribution in 15,000+ retail locations including Costco, Whole Foods, Sprouts, Target, and Kroger. Committed to clean-label manufacturing and industry-leading employee benefits, Bitchin’ Sauce remains a plant-based, better-for-you leader in the snacking category. Learn more at bitchinsauce.com.
