Today we’d like to introduce you to Michelle & Kyle Franke
Hi Michelle & Kyle, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Spicy, sweet, and totally addictive, Fire Season Jalapeño Relish is inspired by one of our aunt Cary’s most beloved recipes. Bold, fun, with a big laugh, Cary was the life of every party and one helluva home cook.
Growing up, if our family was celebrating, we were snacking on Cary’s candied jalapeños, scooped on cream cheese with crackers. She made hundreds of jars for our wedding guests in 2014. Cary passed away in 2015 and we still cook her food to connect to her memory.
In 2023, after a trip to the southwest, Michelle decided to put her own spin on Cary’s recipe and spent the next year recipe testing before Fire Season Jalapeño Relish was born. Michelle’s bright and fresh take tips its hat to family tradition while being completely unique. Fire Season Goods launched in Los Angeles in 2024.
We’ve spent our careers as executives dedicated to storytelling and we view our life in food as an extension of that. We love how a condiment that’s been so important to our family has taken a life of its own. In less than a year, Fire Season Jalapeño Relish is now in gourmet markets and on tables across California. We miss Cary so much, but her legacy in the kitchen lives on.
Fire Season Goods has also expanded our family life in such incredible ways, especially in Los Angeles. Though we’ve both lived in Los Angeles for decades, starting this business has meant we’ve explored neighborhoods, met market owners, and eaters who we might not have otherwise known. We’ve loved Los Angeles for so long, but now in a new way.
Speaking of excellent markets with exceptional owners, we want to shout out Minik Market, which was lost in the Eaton fire recently. Fire Season Jalapeño Relish was stocked here along with an incredible, curated line-up of local and specialty products. If folks want to help with their rebuild, they can do so here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-minik-market.
Starting Fire Season Goods has also changed how we experience food in the world. We enter each shopping experience knowing more about the time, care, patience, and love that it requires to get any product on the shelf. We have such a deep respect for the food professionals and markets that serve our community so well, especially in a huge city like Los Angeles.
Right now, Fire Season Goods is a family-run operation. Michelle cooks Fire Season Jalapeño Relish and manages partners and social media; Kyle handles admin, creative, and accounting work; and Walt, Kyle’s dad who is a retired bottling engineer, assists Michelle in the kitchen.
We know it won’t always be this way, as we have ambitions to scale, so we’re soaking up the sweetness of what it means to have a small food business now. The handmade care that goes into each jar, long hours, personal deliveries, and founder-led tastings where we get to watch people try Fire Season for the first time—it’s all very special to us.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Setting up a food business is challenging, and, in some ways, it really should be to keep consumers safe. In other ways, the basic information about creating a business can feel intentionally far flung. This reality results in a kind of two steps forward, one step back period. But you make it.
Part of that is just keeping the faith, trying new ideas and approaches, and reckoning with some of the more anxiety-driving details as you go.
We’ve also been helped by so many folks. One of the first people we reached out to was Clémence de Lutz. At the time, she was the owner-operator of The Gourmandise Cooking School, where we took her class on The Business of Food. This was an incredible resource, and her clear information was gathered in a packet that we held tight to for months, checking off steps. While Clémence has now moved on to own and operate her stellar Petitgrain Boulangerie in Santa Monica, she remains a great encourager of us.
McCall’s Meat & Fish Co. has also been a transformative relationship for us. McCall’s was our first shop in Los Angeles and Fire Season Jalapeño Relish has found a dedicated following on the east and westside because it’s delicious, of course, but also because their staff is excellent. Folks like Audrey Grewe, Director of Operations, who not only cares about emerging brands, but knows how to create actionable opportunities to showcase beloved products for customers.
We also want to shout out Chris Mueller, founder of Mrkt Partner, who has worked closely with us in recent months to create the tools and connections we need to expand our business in Los Angeles and beyond. Chris has an eye for beauty, great taste, and an easy way of connecting brands to places where they’re going to be treasured by market owners, managers, and customers alike.
You also meet so many other food makers who are generous with their time. Folks like Jess Lynch, the owner of Cozystate, the best vegan queso we know. At one point, we were strangers sending cold emails about processes and labels and, bless her, Jess answered. Kindness like this gives you the confidence to keep going!
Anytime you start something new, you’re bound to struggle—that’s business and life—but creating a community of people who have relevant information, who will cheer you on, and be honest with you, means you’re bound to find your way.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
We make Fire Season Jalapeño Relish, which we’re incredibly proud of. It’s a unique take on a beloved family recipe. Here’s what we know Fire Season Jalapeño Relish is good on:
Hot dogs, burgers, pizza, wings, eggs, tacos, tuna sandos, salmon, ribs, cornbread, creamy cheese, deviled eggs, grilled shrimp, meatballs, adorable little toasts, nachos, bagels, dumplings, pork sandos, quesadillas, ice cream.
Anything else, as Cary might say, is up to you darlin’!
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Buy Fire Season Jalapeño Relish at McCall’s Meat & Fish Co. (Atwater Village and Santa Monica), Potluck Local (Highland Park), and The Canal Market (Venice). More stores here: https://www.fireseasongoods.com/stores
Request Fire Season Jalapeño Relish for your store here: https://www.fireseasongoods.com/wholesale
Email [email protected] with local delivery inquiries!
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
We are curious people! We love learning new things. Because our careers have been in the same spaces for 20+ years, and as we thought about what we wanted for our family in the future, we decided to invest in our own ingenuity and start a project that felt unfamiliar but exciting to us. We wanted to stretch and see what else we could do in our creative lives. Beyond curiosity, our careers have both required a lot of openness, flexibility, and hustle. We’re both problem solvers by nature. We like work and we’re consistent. All these professional characteristics have helped us get started.
More personally, being parents has helped us. We have an eight-year-old son named River, who is our favorite person. This has been a cool opportunity to show him how you can have a good idea and turn that into something real. He watched us set up for a year, succeed on some levels, fail on others, but most importantly he saw how we kept going. Showing him a jar on the shelf at McCall’s for the first time was a big deal for all of us. He’s very proud now when friends buy jars and enjoy it. We even included a little easter egg on the label, a symbol that is meaningful to him personally. Maybe you can spot it!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://fireseasongoods.com
- Instagram: @fire_season_goods
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fire-season-goods
