About Us

What started out as a bit of fun at home in the kitchen, experimenting and making an early version of our now synonymous Original One.. It grew from making jars for friends and family to making jars for friends of friends and then friends of those friends friends...

It didn't take a genius to work out that lots and lots of other people, most we didn't even know.. loved our juicy yet crunchy jalapeno chutney as much as we did! 

So we needed a name.... 50 A4 sheets and a few biros later... with 'H' being the correct pronounciation of 'J' in Spanish.. and penos... Halo (good) Heat/ Spicy (a little naughty) and penos from jalapenos... we settled on Halopenos.. A quick check of the ICO trademark database and we threw our name on it and started about an early version of our bright, fun and playful logo and branding! We've always kept our branding in the ethos of the business that our product is sweet yet cheeky with its heat and a product that is fun to use in some amazing culinary ways.

Neither Henok (Background in banking) or Dan (Fresh Produce trader and importer) had done anything like this before.. personality wise, we're like chalk and cheese. Henok (the good cop) calm, polite, relaxed. Dan the opposite (bad cop).... but armed with a huge amount of optimism, enthusiasm and arguably a large dose of naivity we rolled the ball and got it moving... As they say.. sometimes the start is the hardest bit... We'd possibly disagree with that wise person.

Anyhow... We made a few small batches and set about town centre markets with our wares in literally all weathers! We fondly remember a snowy -7 morning in Horsham when there wasn't a soul about, questioning our own sanity as to what we were doing there! 

Alas... that was back in 2022. The customers kept coming back, the weather got better and more new customers came along and also came back! Halopenos was heading in the right direction!

Things have moved on a long way since then, we've done over a 100 food festivals up and down the country, sold 1000's and 1000's of our jars and drizzles and done 100,000's of tasters to the public meeting some wonderful people along the way!

We now have our own dedicated 5* hygiene rated production kitchen with a small distribution warehouse. We've created 6 flavours of our signature Sweet Shredded Halopenos, 5 flavours in our jalapenos drizzle sauces, 3 flavours in our hot nuts and now our new Halopeno Cheeses which are sure to be very very popular! With many more ideas in our heads or on scrap bits of paper!

Our customers include direct to consumer, catering sized packs to independant street food vendors and physical restaurants, we have a small selection of local and national independant retailers we supply to directly, breweries and tap houses, a distributor who supplies our products to farm shops, delis and independant shops across the UK, our online shop grows weekly, and some exciting prospects on the horizon!

So thats a bit about us and where we've come from. If you've met us in person..  you'll know were are friendly guys. We lovce to chat to customers, we love what we do (most of the time), were proud of where we've come from, what we have created from a blank piece of paper... and what we've achieved to date..

We hope you love our Halopenos as much as we do and we look forward to seeing you out there at a market, food festival or event sometime soon!

Dan & Henok