Editor’s note: This is the second in an occasional series about entrepreneurs from Biddeford, Saco and Old Orchard Beach.

Biddeford resident John Farnsworth and his wife, Elaine George, are fierce about hot pepper. That is the motto for their original product, Tiger Teeth hot sauces, made at On the Corner Café on Pool Street in Biddeford. The couple debuted their product two years ago and currently market two sauces in southern Maine and various parts of New England.

Tell me about Tiger Teeth.

It was started a couple years ago by my wife and I. Her mother made some very good sauces and chutneys so we decided to bring it to market. (Elaine) is from British Cayenne. She’s West Indian – the Caribbean culture. We worked with her mother to perfect the recipe. That works well, because she’s been making it for 30 years. Her mother lives in New Jersey – they migrated here about eight years ago, nine years ago.

Describe your product.

We have two different sauces that are on the market right now. Our lead product is a very hot and spicy red habanera pepper relish. It’s a very simple product and makes food more hot and flavorful.

Where do you sell it?

We sell it here at the café and I think it’s in about 46 other stores and restaurants that use or sell the product, or both. We sell it in southern Maine, southern New Hampshire, Burlington, Vt., down into Massachusetts, in and around Boston, down into Rhode Island and Saratoga, N.Y.

How do you get the name out?

You know, it’s word of mouth and I’m out in the field a lot with my other work. I sell commercial insurance. I’m an independent agent in Kennebunk. I do that five days a week and do Tiger Teeth nights and weekends.

How has the economy affected your business, if at all?

 We started when it was getting weak anyway, so … we really don’t know how good it could be. In the sense of growing a business in a bad economy, I think if we can do it then, then our efforts will be magnified when things turn around.

What does a small business owner need to do to thrive?

Be careful of cost. Don’t go into debt. We’re determined to make this pay for itself along the way and grow it slow. Don’t be too eager, try not to set the world on fire, you know? We’ve been successful with one product and as we’ve added this new product it magnifies our revenue. There’s a lot of people who trust our quality standards. And that’s something we focus on, real good quality and also the production of it.

Where do you make the sauce?

We make it here at the café. We have an arrangement with the owner. They close at 7, so we make it here at night during the week. She’s also closed Sunday and Monday.

Where did the name come from?

 As I was toying with the idea of coming up with a name – my wife’s family is a large family, there’s three sisters and three brothers-in-law. I was talking to one of the brothers-in-law one time about the name and he said, “you know, there’s a pepper they call tiger teeth.” I said, “Oh, I could use that.” Come to find out, tiger teeth pepper is actually a species of pepper so we don’t use that, though sometimes we do, but generally we use habanera, which a hotter, flavorful pepper.

Describe the taste.

Our best compliment is that we’ve been called a classy hot. There are a lot of hot sauces out on the market – and it is a freak show. You can go to some stores and see hundreds of thousands of different sauces, it’s all about the crazy label and what not, so of course we wanted to have the best product that we could make. We add a lot of heat, because we’re serious about heat, and we add a lot of flavor to food. We’re not flavored with garlic or smokiness, ketchup or any of those things. We’re pure. We’re no preservatives, no sugar, no gluten, nothing. We hand-select every pepper. We do, we break open every pepper because sometimes you get black seeds inside. Peppers really don’t like refrigeration, as soon as they’re harvested, they’re refrigerated, and they and tomatoes and that kind of thing, they will start to die inside slowly.

They don’t sit around. We get them as fresh as we can. There’s a plane that comes down to New York to our distributor, twice a week most of they year, and so we usually get them in Boston the day after. So, theoretically, I’d say we’re getting them within a week or two of being harvested.

What would advice would you offer to fellow entrepreneurs?

I would say, if you’re doing something you love, you’ll be enthusiastic about it, and you won’t mind going out and talking to people about it. If it’s a good service and a good product, people will happily pay for it. And so don’t be afraid to take your enthusiasm out on the road and talk to people about it, and if they won’t directly become a user of your product or service, they’ll probably be able to tell you someone who can.

Another piece of advice to offer: You’re not going to do it all locally. Biddeford’s been great for us. Biddeford and Saco, there’s been a lot of local receptiveness to the product.

The market here is good, but when you get down south there’s sometime more people and naturally you’re going to sell more product.

Staff writer Molly Lovell may be reached at 282-4337, ext. 223.