How do you go from working as a county clerk to becoming a connoisseur of hot sauce? For Chef Eneitra Beattie, it was a fairly straight line.

“I worked as a county clerk for five years, got burned out, and just walked away,” she explains. At an employment resource center, she saw a flyer that asked, “Do you love to cook?” She did, indeed, and followed the flyer to Catholic Charities of Louisville’s Common Table culinary arts job training program. There she completed an eight-week curriculum that taught her essential knife and kitchen skills, recipe creation, and soft job skills, and earned her food safety certification in metro Louisville.

Immediately after graduating she landed a temporary position with Brown-Forman’s corporate chef helping with Derby festivities, and three weeks later was offered a full-time position there.  Eneitra cooked, created, and served dishes that required her skill and creativity and that she was proud of for three and a half years. When the chef there retired, she decided to move on.

Eneitra knew she wanted to have her own company that produced goods, but what? As she worked other jobs, ranging from business manager to executive chef, she looked for her niche.

“I was sitting there just marinating when I realized I needed to step out to have my own business. I thought, ‘What would be my first product?’ because I know I want to do production. And it just came to me. I swear it’s like God just smacked me upside the head and was like, ‘hot sauce.’”

In 2020 Eneitra launched Greenz N Tingz, producing two hot sauces—mild and tangy and hot (but not too hot)—and vinaigrettes including mandarin orange, strawberry, and ginger mint.  Already she ships to customers from the west to the east coasts and sells locally to farmers markets and CSA (community supported agriculture) subscriptions. Her goal? “I want to run Frank’s hot sauce out of here,” she laughs. She is working towards international distribution.

Eneitra’s sauces are not like many others because they contain no sodium or sugar and are made entirely from organic vegetables and fruits, some home grown by Eneitra herself, and others sourced locally as much as possible. “So many sauces are really unhealthy,” she says. “I want everything I create to be heart healthy.”

Eneitra also offers salads and a savory sweet potato soup to local patrons and is planning on opening a food truck as the next step in her business.

“I want to take products I love and make them better,” Eneitra says. “I want to be the top of the game when it comes to hot sauce.”

You can find Eneitra at www.GreenzNTingz.com.