Perthshire dad Allan Ferguson runs well-loved business Allan’s Chilli Products – but it all started with six glass jars and a joke.
“One day, I was in the kitchen, cooking a dish,” he recalls cheerily.
“And I needed a sweet chilli jelly because that was in the recipe.
“So I decided to just make a sweet chilli jelly myself.
“I made it, blah blah blah, and there was a wee bit leftover.
“We had some pals coming over for drinks, so I put it in a bowl to use it as a dip.
“And my friend says ‘that’s really nice, I would buy that’.
“So just as a joke, I bought six jars, and I got my friend to make six labels. Then I gave her some.
“A few weeks later, she says: ‘I’ve been speaking to Brian up the road at the shop, and he says he’d buy some of them’.
“And that was 12 years ago now.”
Allan adds with a laugh: “If I’d had a fish supper that night, this would never have happened!”
‘I didn’t hae a scooby about chillies till that day’
Allan makes their chilli products from his home in Abernethy, with the help of his wife, Joan, and her mother, Betty.
The trio’s passion is clear, with dozens of jars of sauce lined up on their kitchen table, and several pots of chilli sauce bubbling away.
It’s hot, too, with the steam rising from the pots, and it’s impressive that they can do this day in, day out.
Allan had no experience in the food and drink industry when he decided to take the plunge into making chilli products.
“I didn’t hae a scooby about chillies till that day,” he laughs.
“But then my brain went into overdrive and I thought ‘this could really work’.”
Allan works in the building trade, but is retiring this summer to focus on Allan’s Chilli Products.
His wife, Joan, admitted she was a little surprised when Allan announced his plans to make and sell chilli sauce 12 years ago.
“It was a bit of a shock, I have to say,” she laughs.
“To be honest, I thought ‘this will never work’.
“But it’s brilliant to look at where things are now.”
87-year-old Betty spends five days a week helping out with the chilli sauce production.
She says: “It evolved, evolved and evolved, and without you realising it, you’re in it!
“But I’ve just loved it.
“My favourite thing is the satisfaction of seeing people’s reactions. At markets, they’ll say, ‘nah, I dinnae like chilli’.
“And then Allan will coax them into trying it, and then they’ll go ‘oh, that’s really good’!”
How do Allan, Joan and Betty make the chilli products?
Allan’s Chilli Products include a huge variety of chilli items, including sauces, jellies, chutneys, oatcakes and even chilli tablet.
He talks me through the process for making their devil chilli sauce in their home kitchen in Abernethy.
“The only chilli we use is habanero,” he explains.
These fiery chilli peppers are grown locally by Allan’s friend in Coupar Angus.
“What we do is, we add the sugar, vinegar, and blended chillies and red peppers into the pot,” adds Allan.
“It’s on a simmer to start with, for about 10-20 minutes until it gets up to the boil.
“Once it gets to a certain texture, we try it on a plate.
“And if the texture is right, that’s it.”
For the jellies, the sauce needs to cook longer until it thickens.
Success of Allan’s Chilli Products is ‘like a dream’
Things have come very far since the beginning of the business with those six jars filled with chilli sauce as a “joke”.
Allan’s Chilli Products is used in various restaurants, cafes and farm shops in Perthshire and beyond, including The Pickled Peacock and Gloagburn Farm Shop and Cafe.
The Perthshire family business fill around 1,000 bottles and jars a week.
At the start, shops ordered their jars in dozens; now, many orders are for hundreds of jars at a time.
“It’s just amazing,” Allan says.
“It’s just like a dream eh?
“When I go into the shops, and see our products on the shelf, it feels fantastic.”
Conversation