Three years ago, Heather Knepper made a career change. The Los Angeles native became a real estate agent, working with her husband, Ron Knepper, to open Your Town Realty.
To make contacts, she started selling salsa.
Heather now spends around 80% of her time on salsa, chopping, mixing, and packaging Cali-style salsas for her small-batch company, Ocho Salsa.
“I thought maybe I’d sell salsa at the farmers markets and talk to people and get to know people,” Heather said. “It was a risk.. [but] here we are, three years later, and [Ocho] is growing.”
Heather’s salsas tie back to her LA roots. As a junior in high school, living in California again for the first time since she was nine, Heather found it hard to see her father — who had a two-hour commute to work every day — during the week. So, on Friday nights, they’d catch up at their neighborhood Mexican restaurant over chips and salsa.
“We would have this time to connect and talk about our week and what was going on. That, to me, was special,” Heather said.
When she moved to the East Coast, Heather wanted to pay tribute to that time with her dad and, unable to find a salsa she truly liked, started trying to recreate the one from her past.
Currently, Ocho Salsa — named for both her dog who passed away in 2017 and after a favorite tequila brand — offers five salsas through Harvie: mild, peach, chipotle, hot habañero, and salsa verde. Each is made Cali-style, hitting a pleasant middle-ground between chunky and smooth. They’re thick enough to stay on chips yet not pico de gallo-level chunky.
What makes her salsas different, however, is the not-so-secret secret ingredient: smoked salt.
“[The Mexican restaurant] fire-roasted their tomatoes, and I can’t do that on a scale when I’m making 100 or 200 salsas,” Heather explains. “We smoke salt with cherrywood for four hours. There’s smoked salt in every one of the salsas; it gives them that kind-of Mezcal flavor.”
Heather’s salsas are always as fresh as they can be; in the summer, she grows some of her produce in a backyard garden, sourcing the rest from Pond Hill Farm, and in the winter, she sources her ingredients from Soergel Orchards.
Farm-fresh ingredients are just one of the few reasons Heather is proud to be a Harvie member and producer.
“Harvie has played a huge role in Ocho Salsa being able to move forward and grow our business. It’s also a fantastic way to support other local farmers and producers which is a win/ win for all of us and the surrounding Pittsburgh Community,” Heather said.
“It’s crazy the difference between fresh, homegrown [produce] and what’s store-bought,” Heather added. “To me, that’s the main reason why I love getting [ingredients] from Harvie and supporting local farmers. You’re getting a way better product.”
As she says, it’s “so good you’ll want it eight days a week.”
Eventually, Heather hopes to switch over to full-time salsa making, adding products like canned salsas, marinara sauce, jams, and more. But no matter how big she gets, the spirit of Ocho will stay the same: “open a jar and gather.”
Add Heather’s flavor-filled salsas to your next Harvie order! (A favorite of ours is the salsa verde. It’s perfectly acidic, smoky, a little sweet, and tastes great on everything.)
New to Harvie? Become a member today, and get local groceries — including salsa — delivered to your door.