Fire Creek Salsa has been featured  in local newspapers introducing their wonderful homemade products. 

• Fire Creek Salsa, The Jackson Independent News, Saturday, January 22,  2000 

Heard of the Spice Girls?  Meet the Sauce Girls
 
 

Kenna- One dip per chip.  That's the rule at the Fire Creek Salsa headquarters on Dog Fork Road.  But when a salsa lover sneaks the sweet and spicy snack to the privacy of his own home, no one will ever know.  So go ahead.  Dip away. 

West Virginia's newest gourmet food hit area stores just a month ago.  But Fire Creek sales already are hot.  "I didn't imagine it ever would take off," said inventor Debbie Watson, a secretary in the law office of Ciccarello & Del Giudice & Lafon.  "It was going to be a hobby at first.  Everybody just wanted it." 

Watson doesn't work alone.  Sister-in-law Jana Wood, who works at Wesbanco in Sissonville, and Watson's best friend, Dena Belisle, a secretary at the law firm for 17 years, also head up the cooking at the new enterprise.  Belisle is Wood's cousin. 

As head delivery man Bud Watson, father-in-law and Jana's father, says, "It's all in the family." 

The women's six young adult children pitch in when they're not in college.  An aunt, a mother and husbands E.C. "Woody" Wood, Darren Watson and John Kessler help label, pack and take inventory. 

"We're a clan," Wood said, as she scurried about a new white commercial kitchen setting out clean, clear pint jars. 

The entrepreneurs are getting to the bottom of a stack of 2,800 jars, having filled them to the brim with four different versions of salsa. 

"You've heard of the Spices Girls," Wood said, peeking up from beneath her questionably attractive but required-by-the-sanitarian hair net.  "We're the sauce girls." 

Belisle persuaded Watson to go public with her specialty last fall.  For 19 years Watson had worked as a housewife, canning pickles, making ketchup, ironing and cleaning, she said.  Her kids grew up and she diversified. 

The little company built a small, barn-shaped building on the family home place off the Goldtown exit of Interstate 77.  It serves as command post, main office, meeting place and dining room.  After canning 750 jars of salsa on Valentine's Day, the three women prepared a fancy dinner for their husbands and served it by candlelight. 

Of course, the Fire Creek product was on the menu.  "We have a ball," they said, nearly in unison.  After their day jobs, they throw on old clothes, meet at the three-stove kitchen and stir the steamy mixtures until 9 p.m. 

Watson tastes each and every batch.  She won't reveal the exact contents.  But dozens of green bell peppers, bags of fresh, chopped onions, huge garlic bulbs and tomatoes provide a little insight.  "and spices," Watson said.  Artist Sharon Harms designed Fire Creek's label – a black fire-breathing dragon roaring in the midst of a legion of stars and moons. 

Some 17 stores and shops now carry the salsa which usually sells from $4.99 to $5.99.  they include Tamarack, Risk's in Kanawha City, Perdue's in Capitol Market, Kitchen Kaboodle, Foodland and B & B Market in Sissonville, Almost Heaven in the Charleston Town Center and Harding's Restaurant. 

Though most people buy it as a dip, Belisle and Watson said it's yummy with salmon and rice, pork chops, stuffed peppers, meat loaf, scrambled eggs, baked potatoes and mixed with cream cheese.  "There's a little zing after you swallow it," Watson said. 

Fire Creek brings to five the number of salsas produced in West Virginia, said Jean Smith, director of marketing for the state Department of Agriculture.  "It's an easy thing to identify with," Smith said.  "Salsa is good as a snack food and very versatile.  You can use it in different recipes."  Watson said each salsa is different and there's room for all.  "We just thought we could do it," Watson said.

 Southern Jackson County women continue business expansion.

Fire Creek Salsa is a small business located in the rural Goldtown area that is owned and operated by three local women who have used family recipes and old-fashioned ingenuity to produce products that are now sold in 5 states.

The business epitomizes the area's independent mentality.  "We wanted to do something on our own," said Fire Creek Salsa co-owner Dena Belisle.  "Make a product that tastes like no other-and we enjoy doing it."

What started out as a side job and a way to make some extra money for Debbie Watson, Jana Wood, and Belisle has now grown into a large operation which distributes to about 100 grocery stores in West Virginia alone, plus interstate distribution.  Thus far, Fire Creek Salsa has expanded and grown by simply influencing a store to carry Fire Creek Salsa, people try the products, and then watch as sales go up.  The women are the sole masterminds behind their 16 different products.  They've used Watson's family recipes to produce regular or chunky-textured salsas in mild, hot, and fire hot flavors.  Some of their other original recipe products include peppers in sauce, black bean sauce, jellies, strawberry/banana jam, and banana butter.

"Debbie has been making her family's recipes for about 5 years," said Belisle.  "In that time, she has completely rearranged the recipes to make the products we sell today."

During summer months, the ladies buy their fresh ingredients from local farmers' markets.  In the winter, they get their vegetables from Cory Brothers, a Charleston-based food distributor.

Some other people that have helped with the growth of Fire Creek Salsa are E. C. Wood, who does the packing, neighbor Gene Harpold, who does some delivery work, and Thelma Jarrett, Kathlene Young, and Dexter Jarrett, who handle individual jar labeling.

Currently, the owners put in a long day's work at the respective jobs before coming home to their small kitchen and working evenings to make their Fire Creek Salsa products. 

"We're hoping to one day retire from our jobs and work full-time making our recipes," said Belisle.

At the rate they're going, it won't be long.