If you don’t know Dave Hirschkop’s name, you might know his hot sauce — Dave’s Insanity Sauce.
The Alexandria native, who has worked in the food industry for nearly his whole life, was inducted into the Specialty Food Association Hall of Fame in 2023. He’s still brimming with ideas.
The story behind what was once the world’s hottest hot sauce begins here. After graduating from Fort Hunt High School (now West Potomac) and attending Boston University, Hirschkop spent some time in California. When he returned to the D.C. area, he missed the quality Mexican food he had enjoyed on the West Coast.
This led him to open his first business at age 22 in 1991, a taqueria called Burrito Madness, in College Park, Maryland. Driven by an urge to create new things, and annoyed with his drunk customers, he set out to make the hottest sauce in the universe. When asked if he likes spicy food, he says he’s not the type of person to put hot sauce on everything, but there are some foods that should be spicy.
“Initially, I was just having fun,” Hirschkop said. However, the sauce soon grew too big to remain a hobby.
Dave Hirschkop graduated from Fort Hunt High School (now West Potomac) and invented Dave's Insanity Sauce.
As Hirschkop’s company grew, he wore a straitjacket to trade shows to grab attention, leaning into the “insanity” part of the sauce’s name. The sauce was banned from the National Fiery Foods & BBQ Show in 1993 due to a “minor respiratory incident.” Like any company, Hirschkop said they had their “snafus” and their trade show appearances were not without incident. He recalls one time someone passed out after trying the hot sauce (don’t worry, they were fine 10 minutes later).
Eventually, his company expanded into pasta sauce, which they still sell, among other sauces and recently the viral TikTok “pink sauce.” For a time, they also experimented with quirky snacks, like Dave’s Lucky Nuts — one in 10 peanuts is extra spicy. They even tried a hot sauce where the spice level could be adjusted by turning the cap. This was made possible by two separate compartments, one with a hotter sauce and the other with a milder sauce. It also had a spray nozzle meant to coat the food more evenly.
At every turn, the fun and experimentation came first.
“I think the products I can create that are truly inspired, that resonate with people, are created when you’re not really focused on money,” Hirschkop said. “You really focus on just creating something amazing. And I think that's kind of where I was at.”
During 29 years of running Dave’s Gourmet, Hirschkop learned valuable lessons. He thinks the best entrepreneurs are humble and make efforts to learn in a constantly shifting market. “Grit” is a bit of a self-help cliché, but Hirschkop thinks this mindset is everything.
“Just find a way,” Hirschkop said. “You will not know how to do everything. Find somebody to tell you how. You just have to find a way to do it.”
Now, Hirschkop lives in San Rafael, California, and is married with three kids. He likes to try new foods, enjoys a game of tennis and treats bouncing around ideas with other entrepreneurs as a hobby. Since exiting the company in 2022, much of his work has been mentoring other entrepreneurs. He volunteers with a variety of organizations, including one which focuses on business owners from under-represented demographics. A pet food company, a chocolate and snack bar company, a food kit company and a beer company are on the roster of his recent mentees.
“It’s nice to help people, build relationships and watch people's businesses start to really flourish,” Hirschkop said. Whether he is mentoring other entrepreneurs or hatching ideas of his own, he credits part of his flair for business to his upbringing in Virginia.
He lived in the Mount Vernon area and his father, who still lives in Virginia, worked as a constitutional litigator in an office near Christ Church in Old Town Alexandria. The ever-present awareness of history made him want to make a difference in the world, even in small ways.
Ultimately, he sees starting and running a business as just one more way to create. When he decides which of his many ideas will be the backbone of his next project, he hopes it will be something that makes a difference. The idea of trying to outsell makers of a pre-existing product doesn’t appeal to him so much.
“I’m not going to cure cancer, but I do want it to be something that moves the world forward in some way,” Hirschkop said. “Business is just sort of a means to an end. I like creating. I like innovation.”
