Meet Our Makers: Kosta Papanikitas of The Fermentalists

Kosta Papanikitas is is a co-founder of The Fermentalists, a small batch and award winning brand of hot sauces, jams and seasonings crafted in Sydney.

The Fermentalists use natural fermentation processes to coax out chilli’s mouthwatering complexity for condiments that aren’t just hot, but hugely flavoursome. 

The story of The Fermentalists is fascinating and a great lesson in taking the time to get things right and, as Kosta puts it, “not doing things by halves”.

C&C: Hi Kosta! Can you tell us a bit about the early days of The Fermentalists? Where did the idea come from and how did the business get started?

Kosta: The Fermentalists was actually started by a good friend of ours by the name of Sam Sgambellone. He was the OG Fermentalist - used to operate on the sidelines of his cafés. He started playing with a whole bunch of different ferments and really nailed it with this one particular hot sauce that he was able to then start selling to local cafés. A few years on, he was preoccupied with other business interests and Chris and I really needed a great excuse to be able to hit the pub and justify it as work time to our families. So, we took the opportunity to take the recipe for the habanero hot sauce off Sam’s hands. The intent initially was to do it on the side and spend some Saturdays together fermenting, being mixologists, trying different things and having fun. 

This was right at the crux of COVID-19, so we’re talking 2021. There was a real desire to connect with people and we had the opportunity to be creative with this. So we jumped at that opportunity. Chris and I very quickly discovered that this wasn’t going to be a little side gig as we had initially planned for a couple of reasons - the first one being that we really just don’t have it in us to do anything by halves. We saw the opportunity that there was in the brand and the product because there was just such a desire and demand for it. We took advantage of the downtime that COVID-19 offered us and we were driven by the demand from the customers that we were talking to. We started expanding on the range - it really was a bit of mad scientist kitchen craft to begin with, where we would literally just get a whole bunch of random ingredients, ferment them and just try them out. We would share them amongst our mates and existing customers and get feedback. The first real success of the extension was the chilli jam - the minute that it dropped, it became an absolute hit with our customer base and introduced a whole bunch of new customers to The Fermentalists’ brand. By that stage it was early 2022 and it’s just been growing and growing ever since, continually adding new products and new categories for business, to the point now where we are across four different categories, we have seventeen products in retail and roughly about that again in foodservice. 

C&C: Amazing. Turning to the products now, your website emphasises how central flavour is to all of your products, and that you use natural fermentation processes to extract the maximum flavour. Can you explain why these methods of making the hot sauces, jams and seasonings are an important part of The Fermentalists’ products?

Kosta: So for anyone who hasn’t tried a fermented product - particularly a fermented hot sauce - the depth and complexity of the flavour is really unrivalled, relative to a non-fermented hot sauce. Essentially, what you’re doing is allowing all of these flavours to develop for a period of time. Some of our ferments are in excess of twelve months, so you can just imagine a brewing of these various flavours coming together, letting that natural process do its thing. It takes a little bit of the edge off the heat, while simultaneously adding layer upon layer of beautiful, delicate flavours - rather than a stinging heat that precipitates really quickly. Fermented sauces and condiments have a long, rich and layered finish to them.

Every one of our products has an element of fermented chillies throughout it, but that doesn’t restrict us from being able to be a little bit creative and explore some different flavour profiles. Like the Carolina Reaper fermented hot sauce for example - it really is just a fermented expression of a Carolina Reaper. But then if you look at our fermented Chilli Relish as an example - it’s beautiful stewed onion, garlic, ginger, capsicum and tomato flavours with a layer of heat that adds to the flavour rather than making it an uncomfortable experience. The one that I love giving to customers because it just blows their socks off is the Habanero Oil. It’s an oil format, you wouldn’t typically be able to get a lot of delicate flavours into an oil because it’s such a prominent flavour and has such heavy overtones. But with the fermented Habanero Oil, especially when you open the jar and taste it, it’s like you’re consuming a salami. It’s this weird emotion that you get when you try this oil, but you think you’re consuming salami. Customers are wowed by it at every event we do. Showing the customers that chilli sauces and condiments don’t have to bring a really overpowering heat that doesn’t allow them to enjoy a quality meal is probably, for me, the greatest joy in being able to share these products. It really is about utilising the different spectrum of flavours across the range to add to the dish that you’re serving.

Customers are often asking us ‘which product goes with which meal’? As a general rule of thumb, if I’m eating a beautiful cut of meat, I love some fermented chillies on the side of my mustard and some beautiful salt. It’s really clean and fresh and it’s got that kick of heat. The overarching recommendation always is to use the flavours of each individual product as you really desire them. I love a beautiful sandwich and on the odd occasion I like a little bit of a savoury, tomato-y, relish-y flavour profile to complement the sandwich. Other times, if I want something a little bit sweeter and a little more hot, I’ll use the chilli jam. So the flavours are really interchangeable. If I want a mild heat, then I’ll go with something like a bourbon barbecue. If I want something a little bit hotter, the Carolina Reaper gives it a great kick and it doesn’t detract from whatever meal I’m preparing, it really just adds another layer to it.

C&C: This ties nicely into another question that I had for you, which is: if I was brand new to The Fermentalists’ world, which product would you recommend that I try first?

Kosta: It really comes down to the kind of flavours that you like. The Chilli Jam is probably the most approachable for absolute newcomers and it’s a winner every single time. The Crunchy Chilli Oil absolutely blew consumers’ minds and was the bestseller by some distance. The Fermented Hot Honey - there is no other Fermented Hot Honey on the market and it’s proving to be really popular.

It’s really versatile in ways that people might not expect as well - you can use it on some fried chicken, add it to your pepperoni pizza. We love cooking roast carrots with a little bit of hot honey - a hint of sweetness and a hint of heat.

If you go on TikTok at the moment, it’s all about the baked cheeses with hot honey and it’s absolutely delicious with that too. For a seasoned chilli head, the Fermented Chillies in Oil are really versatile - you can stir it through your pasta, add it to your panini, have it as a side to a beautiful cut of meat. The Habanero Oil adds a beautiful nuttiness and this deep, rich, intense flavour to anything you add a spoonful to. The number one sauce in terms of sales is the Smoked Garlic & Honey Habanero, simply because everyone loves a beautiful, rich Habanero flavour with the garlic and the natural sweetness of the honey. It’s a winner.

C&C: Turning to the business side of things, what has the process of getting The Fermentalists on the shelf and into retailers been like?

Kosta: At the moment, consumers are really crying out for fermented products. Increasingly, consumers’ understanding of the benefits of fermentation has improved dramatically. So we’re finding that we have to explain that less as they recognise the brand as well, because of the strong fermented nature of our name. It’s really popping out and consumers are drawn to it. Also, given that we’ve launched the Crunchy Chilli Oil and the Hot Honey and both of those are really on trend right now, we’re finding that we would have thought selling to retailers would have been the biggest challenge, but it’s actually being able to manufacture enough. Every one of our products is small batch, we produce all of our ferments in sixteen kilo batches. We do that because it means we can control the quality of each batch and it also means that we stay true to our artisan beginnings. The only thing that you cannot compromise when it comes to fermentation is time. So where we’ve had these huge uptakes in demand from consumers and retailers alike, the single biggest constraint that we have is that we can’t rush that time. 

It’s been really positive - the feedback from the customers and retailers, particularly since we’ve expanded our reach with Cartel & Co, has been really positive across the range. 

C&C: That’s great to hear. So in that process of getting the products ‘on the shelf’ and going through that evolution, how did you end up working with a distributor and why did you choose to work with Cartel & Co? 

Kosta: My background is in FMCG, I worked in one of the largest FMCG companies in Australia - both Chris and I did actually. We had some amazing relationships with some independent retailers, namely Ritchies stores in Victoria. We met with them late last year because they were super keen to bring The Fermentalists on board, but beyond that they were also keen to ensure that our brand would get the reach and coverage that they thought it deserved. So they introduced us to Hayssam and the Cartel team, which came really highly recommended. We met with Hayssam in December and within about three weeks from the first introductory meeting that we had over coffee to finalising things, it was evident that Cartel & Co was a distributor that was aligned to our core values - that authenticity, integrity and that broad reach. We are unashamedly small batch and artisan, we aren’t aiming to be in every single store and have our products just sit on the shelf. We’re keen to make sure that we were supportive of the retailers and put them in the right place, which would ensure a mutually beneficial outcome. Cartel & Co were very much on board with that, they also came really highly recommended from Ritchies as I mentioned and so far they’re bang on the mark. Personally, Chris and I are excited about the future - not only for The Fermentalists but for future endeavours together.

C&C: Awesome. What do you envision for the future of The Fermentalists as a brand?

Kosta: The first priority is to ensure that we really get The Fermentalists out into the right stores and that we’re ensuring that our retailers are being taken care of with in store support and that there’s adequate sell through. Making sure that we maintain the consistency and quality of the product is non-negotiable. That said, we have just moved into a brand new facility which will dramatically improve our ability to explore the boundaries of both fermentation and artisan condiments more broadly. We are currently looking at a number of different opportunities to put our own mad scientists hats back on and start playing with different ideas in that artisan condiment space - think sweet preserves, relishes and maybe some other condiments that existing Fermentalists consumers would love to have beyond just chilli. That’s something that really excites us, I can’t ensure that that’s going to be a quick process because we won’t be launching anything unless we’re absolutely proud of putting our name on it - but the exciting thing is that we’ve started the process and we’re really excited to be moving into this new space and seeing what comes of it.