The Blue Smoke Salsa Story

It all started in Fayette County, West Virginia

In 1993, Robin Hildebrand started making salsa in her West Virginia home. She wasn't building a business; she was feeding the people around her. She built the recipe around sweet onions, which turned out to be the whole thing. Friends asked for jars, then friends of friends, then stores.

And Blue Smoke Salsa was born.

Over thirty years later the recipe hasn't changed. It's still made the way she did.

Kettle cooked in small batches

Most salsa on a grocery shelf is mass produced and run at large volumes. Ours is kettle cooked, heated slowly in small batches so the onions caramelize and the flavors settle into each other. It takes longer, and it costs more. It's also the reason people describe our salsa as sweet before they describe it as spicy.

We start with sweet Vidalia onions out of Georgia and red, ripe tomatoes from Ohio, because the recipe only works if those two are right. That's the foundation of all four of our recipes: Mild, Medium, Hot, and Peach. Every one is gluten free, with no high fructose corn syrup, and no artificial preservatives.

Made in Appalachia, for Appalachia

Blue Smoke Salsa is an Appalachian brand, and we're not vague about what that means. We're made in West Virginia, and we're building out from here, through Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and western North Carolina, the heart of the Appalachian Mountains. That's the map, and we're working our way across it, one grocery manager at a time.

We know these places because we're from them. We know what a church potluck table looks like and what gets brought to a tailgate in Morgantown. We know that in most of this region, showing up with something to share is how you say the things people around here don't say out loud.

That's the food we make. It isn't a condiment, it's the jar you open when family and friends are coming over.

Where to find Blue Smoke Salsa

You'll find us in Kroger stores across West Virginia and in independent grocers and independent retailers like Tamarack, Capitol Market, and many others across the region. If we're not in your store yet, you can order directly from us; we ship anywhere in the country. 

And if we aren't in a store near you, ask your grocery manager for us by name. That's how most of our shelves got started.