On 'Hot Ones,' Butterfly Bakery Showcases Vermont Chiles

When Claire Georges learned last fall that one of her Butterfly Bakery of Vermont hot sauces had landed a coveted slot on the current season of the hot wing-fueled YouTube interview show “Hot Ones,” she was thrilled but a little nervous.

For the third time since 2018, a Butterfly Bakery hot sauce has made the 10-bottle gauntlet faced by celebrities ranging from Shaquille O’Neal to Ariana Grande. The stars cry, sweat and curse through progressively spicier wings while discussing their careers with host Sean Evans.

“Hot Ones” celebrates a decade in March, and each episode draws at least a million views. Lady Gaga’s February 13 appearance, in which she daintily nibbled vegan wings in a gown blooming with ghostly flowers, quickly tallied 4 million.

When Lady Gaga reached Butterfly Bakery’s Hot House sauce at spot No. 7, she took a big bite and then worried aloud about the heat kicking in. “It is good, though,” she said, “but is it gonna come and get me, like, really soon?”

Of all the “Hot Ones” reactions to her sauces, Georges, 44, said her favorite occurred in 2023 when actor Pedro Pascal of “Game of Thrones” fame encountered her Taco Vibes Only. Thanks to a potent blend of Vermont-grown Carolina Reaper and ghost peppers, the sauce had claimed position No. 9. But Pascal was skeptical.

“Butterfly Bakery of Vermont?” he read from the label. “How bad could Vermont be?” After chomping into a wing, he conceded, “OK, Vermont.”

Butterfly Bakery’s exposure through “Hot Ones” not only brings Vermont to the attention of global celebrities and their fans but also puts the state’s farm bounty into their mouths and creates demand for more — which brings us back to why Georges was nervous.

She sources 100 percent of the produce for her hot sauces from about 15 small farms, mostly in Vermont and all within 200 miles of her Barre facility. She annually buys about 20,000 pounds of peppers alone.

As soon as she heard about her latest “Hot Ones” feature last fall, Georges started ramping up production. Heatonist, the New York company that selects the sauces, ordered 36,000 five-ounce bottles of Hot House and has an exclusive to sell them through the season.

The dill- and cilantro-forward recipe is made with a fiery combination of Carolina Reaper, ghost, habañero, serrano and Carmen peppers. Thankfully, Georges’ 2,000-square-foot freezer held plenty of the necessary locally grown peppers and tomatoes, but she was worried about cilantro.

In October, she scrambled to source 500 pounds — “probably all the rest of the cilantro that the state had,” Georges said. “If they had told us a week later, we would have been screwed.”

Others might have subbed nonlocal cilantro, but Georges is firm in her resolve to support small farms and a strong local food system.

Her commitment to farmers matters, said Geoff Kleis of West Pawlet’s Familia Farm. The farmer, 44, first sold Georges 500 pounds of red jalapeños in 2017, when he had just established his operation. The two businesses have grown together, and Familia now harvests thousands of pounds of hot peppers annually for Georges, from habañeros to ghosts.

“Claire is really about rising the tide and floating more ships,” Kleis said. “I think this relationship does that for not only me, but a lot of people.”

Butterfly Bakery’s devotion to local is also about taste.

“Claire’s dedication to partnering with local farmers is evident when you try her sauces,” Heatonist CEO and founder Noah Chaimberg said. The “high-quality ingredients and balance of flavor and heat” have made the company a repeat pick, he said.

Other than the Heatonist order, Georges said “Hot Ones” does not directly spike sales but has helped open doors for her hot sauces to be stocked elsewhere. “It really gives you credibility,” Georges said.

As the Butterfly Bakery name indicates, the company started with baked goods in 2003 and continues to make products such as maple-sweetened cookies and granola. Georges works with about 25 clients to make their branded products in her facility, and she bought Fat Toad Farm’s goat’s milk caramel line in 2022.

She blended her first hot sauces around 2011 using peppers traded for unsold treats at the close of the Capital City Farmers Market. From that humble start, the entrepreneur said, her company exceeded $1 million in annual sales a few years back — thanks in large part to Vermont chiles. In addition to 13 core hot sauces and dozens of microbatches, the business makes sauces for other companies. Hot sauce accounts for about 60 percent of her team’s time and generates roughly the same percent of Butterfly Bakery-branded revenue.

Georges is constantly dreaming up new flavor combinations, inspired by what’s in the freezer and at the market. “I can taste things in my head like a musician who can hear the music in their head,” she said.

Despite landing on the upper end of the spiciness range with two of her three “Hot Ones” sauces, Georges noted that she generally targets mid-level heat. “It is absolutely not my goal to blast people’s brains out,” she said.