Gnarly Pepper Sets Down New Roots in NH

Sara Gotch, owner of Gnarly Pepper. Photo by Christine Carignan.

Sara Gotch, an avid traveler with a background in graphic design and advertising, worked in the fine dining industry for a decade before deciding she wanted to be her own boss and no longer depend on vacation time to travel the globe.

So she transformed her love of healthy eating into a business. In 2016, Gotch began testing recipes for a mayo alternative, which led to her new entrepreneurial venture, Gnarly Pepper. She developed customized seasonings for Greek yogurt. The blends, marketed as a calorie-saving alternative to traditional chip and vegetable dips, can be added to a variety of foods, including hummus and olive oil for bread dipping, says Gotch.

Gnarly Pepper now offers three seasoning blends: Like Mayo, Veggie and Onion. “I put it on top of hamburgers. It’s a great side mixing it with quinoa. An egg sandwich with the onion dip is amazing or anything squash based,” she says.

When mixed with Greek yogurt and used as an alternative for any mayo-based salad, it can save about 1,200 calories per cup, Gotch claims. “Two tablespoons of any kind of sour cream-based dip that you buy at the store has about 80 to 120 calories per two tablespoons, and I think a lot of people probably eat more than two tablespoons,” she says. “There’s 16 tablespoons in a cup, and one cup of Greek yogurt is 130 to 160 calories.”

Gotch, who doesn’t have a business background or any formal business training, made her first sale in January and now sells through Amazon and in various stores in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. She and her business recently moved to Manchester from Iowa with her fiancé, and also placed Gnarly Pepper in six stores in Concord, Hampton, Laconia, Manchester and Meredith. She hopes to add more stores in NH and New England to her roster.

“It’s been a learning process,” says Gotch of starting her business, which she is dedicated to running full time. “I’ve been teaching myself on YouTube, and reading a lot of magazines and blogs.”