Factory Tours
Queen Majesty Hot Sauce
Erica Diehl started making hot sauce long before she founded Queen Majesty. In the early 2000s, while working as a graphic designer, she began experimenting in her own kitchen simply because she couldn’t find what she wanted on store shelves. “I had a hard time finding things that were hot enough, that didn’t have preservatives or dyes, and that actually tasted fresh,” she recalls. What she made for herself wasn’t meant to dominate a meal—it was meant to lift it, brighten it, and enhance its natural flavors. By 2013, she realized others might be craving that same balance, and Queen Majesty was born.
She launched with one flavor at Smorgasburg, where thousands of people sampled her sauce every week. That direct, unfiltered feedback shaped the brand early on and still drives her approach today. The exposure eventually led to a spot on “Hot Ones"—seasons three and four, when the show was still in its early cult era. Between Smorgasburg and Hot Ones, Queen Majesty found its audience without outside investors, growing only as sustainably as Erica could manage. More than a decade later, the company remains proudly 100% woman-owned.
For Erica, keeping production in New York City is non-negotiable. She has lived in the city since the ’90s, and its food culture—vibrant, diverse, and constantly evolving—has shaped her palate. “There’s nothing like being exposed to different types of food,” she says. That inspiration carries directly into the kitchen, where Queen Majesty still makes small-batch hot sauce by hand. Many hot sauce companies use co-packers; Erica never wanted to. “I don’t want to lose that control over quality,” she says.
A typical production week includes a day or two of prepping ingredients, followed by cooking and bottling focused on a single flavor. Fresh produce arrives weekly from a local, Mexican-owned distributor. Recipes are mixed by Carmen; Gloria and Dominga cook and bottle; Yadira, Carina, and Carmen label and assemble; and Catherine & Genaro handle shipping and operations. Before any batch gets bottled, Erica and Carmen both taste and check pH levels to ensure consistency. The result is a sauce with a fresher, brighter flavor—cooked quickly in small pots and bottled immediately instead of being cooked down for hours.
That intimacy extends beyond production. Queen Majesty has six full-time employees, two part-time employees, and a few seasonal workers, many of whom have been with the company for almost 10 years. Erica knows every one of them, and that closeness is at the center of her philosophy. “It has to be a win–win situation,” she says. “We help each other out. No one needs approval to take a day off. There’s a lot of mutual respect.” Her voice breaks when she talks about how deeply her team cares about the business. “They think of things I haven’t even thought of. They just want it to work.”
Erica would rather stay small and pay her people well than chase growth that compromises what matters. When she hears other founders talk about becoming household names, she understands that kind of growth often requires sacrifices in areas that matter to her, particularly quality control and work-life balance. For her, success looks more like loyal customers who regularly repurchase, the people who know exactly what they’re buying when they see the brand at a local store, or the shopper who discovers the sauce for the first time at a pop-up market.
Markets remain one of Erica’s favorite parts of the business. She loves the interaction, the immediate reactions, the chance to hear what people love (or wish existed) right at the table. Events bring that same energy, and she hopes to do more of them in the future.
But running a manufacturing business in New York comes with challenges. One of the biggest is providing affordable healthcare for employees. Erica has even traveled to D.C. to lobby for better small-business healthcare subsidies through the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program. Supply chain costs continue to rise, and last year’s tariffs have cost Queen Majesty business in Canada. Despite mounting pressures, she has barely raised retail prices—most flavors are still $10 a bottle, the same as when she started. She knows she’ll eventually need to adjust, but for now she’s focused on finding savings on the back end without passing costs onto her customers.
As Queen Majesty continues to grow—slowly, deliberately, on its own terms—Erica keeps returning to the values that shaped the company from the start: uncompromising quality, fresh ingredients, small-batch production, and a workplace built on trust and care. The city that shaped her palate continues to shape her business, and the customers who first discovered her at a market booth still influence how she creates, experiments, and evolves.
To shop Queen Majesty’s adventurous, delicious hot sauces, visit their website.