Market for Pepper Sauces Is Getting Hotter : Cooking: Florida restaurateur bottles his own concoctions to take advantage of changing American tastes.

Chris Way grew up on food spiced with fiery datil peppers. So it was only natural for Way to cook up a datil sauce for diners at his St. Augustine restaurant, Barnacle Bill’s.

When customers started swiping bottles of his homemade sauce from the restaurant’s tables, Way figured he might be onto something. “If they are stealing it, maybe I could give them a chance to buy it,” he thought.

Now Way is chief executive officer of Dat’l Do-It, the nation’s only company making sauces and relishes exclusively from the datil pepper. Sales are growing steadily, with Americans’ taste for spicy food spreading faster than the burn from a fresh jalapeno.

“It’s a cult thing. It’s along the same line as people who swear by Harley Davidsons or love garlic,” said Way, whose own Harley is decorated with paintings of pepper plants. “People seek out hot sauces. The palette of the American public is getting enamored with hot food.”

Indeed. The hot sauce and salsa business has flamed into a $3-billion-a-year industry in the United States, said Melissa Stock, managing editor of Chile Pepper Magazine in Albuquerque, N.M.

“People’s taste buds are coming of age. They are becoming more adventurous,” Stock said.

Cajun cooking from Louisiana, Southwestern chili and Southern barbecue are among the best-known regional bills of spicy fare. But datil-laced Minorcan cuisine from North Florida is catching on too.

The datil pepper, grown only in St. Augustine, produces a burning sensation comparable to the habanero pepper from South America.

The datil “may not be in a class by itself, but it doesn’t take long to call roll,” Way said. “It is the second or third hottest pepper in the world.”

Legend has it that Minorcans, a hearty band of indentured servants, brought the datil pepper to St. Augustine--the nation’s oldest city--in the mid-1700s, but there are no hot peppers grown in Minorca.

“In all probability,” Way said, “the fiery pepper came via the trade routes from Central America, perhaps packed with Spanish sailors traveling the Caribbean and Florida coastline during the 18th and 19th Century.”

No matter its origin, the datil has been a staple of Minorcan cooking for nearly two centuries.

Way’s company opened with just one product--Dat’l Do-It Hot Sauce--but has since added Hellish Relish, Devil Drops, Minorcan Mustard, Gourmet Vinegar, Hot Vinegar, Datil Pepper Dills and Pepper Jelly. A new Dat’l Do-It Wing Sauce for chicken wings is coming out soon.

The products, with a distinctive alligator label, are available by mail order, in some supermarkets and a shop in the historic district of St. Augustine. The company is also starting to ship its products to Japan and hopes to introduce gift boxes in major department stores in December.

To ensure an adequate supply of the peppers, Way started a datil farm at the company’s headquarters near Interstate 95.

The peppers are grown in pots on platforms four feet off the ground. They are drip fed by an automatic system that supplies both water and nutrients. An estimated 10,000 lady bugs patrol the farm to take care of pests.

Last summer, 1,200 plants produced 14,000 pounds of datil peppers. The first peppers are picked in June and the harvesting goes on throughout the summer.

As the business grew, Way said he had to learn the hard way about canning, labeling, marketing, mail order and distribution.

“The only thing I knew how to do was to make different sauces that tasted good,” he said. “It’s a tough, tough business. I enjoy it and I’m too far into it to turn back.”

Way believes the current rage for hot sauces and peppers is a fad. His goal is to survive the craze by producing sauces that appeal to all palates.

“This hottest thing will eventually wane,” he said. “The datil pepper is one of the hottest peppers in the world, but our products aren’t the hottest products in the world.”

Sauces that are too hot sit on the shelf for occasional use, he said. Way wants people to use his products more often.

Katherine Lesinski, 20, a junior majoring in broadcasting at the University of Florida in Gainesville, counts herself among those hooked on peppers.

“They add flavor to my meal. I like green peppers, hot peppers and banana peppers,” Lesinski said. “They put a little zing to whatever it is.”

At Chile Pepper Magazine, managing editor Stock believes the hot pepper craze will endure.

“Once people start eating peppers, they never really give it up,” she said. “When was the last time you heard someone say, ‘I used to eat spicy foods, but now I’m just eating bland.’ ”