Ardell Salsa Brings a Family Recipe to Market
LEAH THOMPSON / SCANDIA STUDIOS
By QUINN PROPST
Ward Media Staff Reporter
Bainbridge Island resident Ross Eide didn’t originally plan to start a salsa business. But after years of sharing a family recipe—and watching people light up at the first bite—he launched Ardell Salsa, named in honor of his mother, the salsa’s original creator.
The first time Eide tried his mom’s salsa, it was a moment he’ll never forget.
“It was such an explosion of flavor and taste to our usual palette,” Eide said. “It was kind of like that scene in The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy first lands in Oz, it’s all in black and white, and then she opens up the door and it’s all in color. That’s kind of like what happened to my taste buds.”
His mother, Ardell, was born in north central Minnesota to Norwegian immigrants, and her cooking reflected the simplicity of her upbringing.
“The spices of her childhood and her cooking were salt, and then maybe if something was special or someone got a little crazy, they’d have a little pepper, and that’s kind of the food I grew up with,” Eide said.
That changed in the 1990s, when Ardell was teaching in Arizona and surprised her family by whipping up a bold, flavorful salsa. It became a staple, passed down to her children.
“My mom, thankfully, taught it to us—to myself and my two sisters—and we, in turn, made it for our kids,” Eide said.
Years later, when Eide was a stay-at-home dad, he brought his version of the salsa to his son’s preschool as a snack. The kids loved it. One day, while standing in line at the door, another parent made a suggestion: You should sell this.
“And I thought, you know, maybe I should do that someday,” he said.
Eventually, the idea stuck.
“Then one day, it just kind of clicked, and I went through the whole process of getting a commercial kitchen and getting a processing license and forming an LLC, and all the stuff that you need to get a salsa business started.”
Eide officially began selling Ardell Salsa in February 2024. His first retail clients were Bay Hay and Feed and the Rolling Bay Jiffy Mart on Bainbridge Island. The salsa is now available at a co-op in Tacoma, the Chimacum Corner Farmstand, and Eide is working with a distributor to expand into Town & Country Markets. He also sells direct to customers at the Bainbridge and Poulsbo farmers markets.
The company’s mantra, “Fewer ingredients, higher quality,” reflects the simplicity at the heart of the brand.
“We just use tomatoes, jalapeños, green onions, different peppers depending on the heat level that we want, and then salt, and then that’s it,” Eide said. “Because we use so few ingredients, we can really focus on the qualities of those ingredients.”
The result is a salsa with a fresh, cilantro-forward flavor that arrives on store shelves within 24 hours of being made. Eide rents space in a commercial kitchen on Bainbridge and typically processes and delivers the product in quick succession.
Before starting the business, Eide worked as an attorney. That background, he said, came in handy.
“Reading minutiae and state statutes and processing the business license—it was helpful,” he said.
Today, Ardell Salsa offers mild, medium, and hot varieties. The medium salsa is made with jalapeños; the hot version uses habaneros. Eide is continuing to experiment with new flavor and heat profiles.
“We’ve come up with a Serrano hot that we want to put on the market. We’ve also come up with a fire salsa, which uses ghost peppers, and that has a heat to it, but you can still taste the flavor.”
And for those who insist nothing is ever spicy enough? Eide has an answer for them, too.
“Every single time I have a tasting or a farmers market or something like that, I always come across some dude, some guy, and he’s always like, ‘That’s not hot enough, that’s not hot enough.’ I wanted to have a salsa that’s so hot that it just shuts them up.”
That salsa is called Shut Up Fire—made with Carolina Reapers.
“I will say that it is just heat,” he said. “It will blind your taste buds. You’re not getting a lot of flavor in the salsa, it’s just heat, and it’s just to shut these people up. I mean, at a certain point, real hot food gets to be like middle school dare candy, right? And, you know, I’m like, if you want to sacrifice flavor for just heat, I can do that.”
While Shut Up Fire is currently only available by special order, Eide plans to carry it as a specialty item and is working on branding and logo design. The business also plans to expand into non-salsa products with a new item called dip cream—a creamy Midwest-style dip for vegetables, chips, or potatoes.
“People really seem to like our dip cream that we tasted when we had a tasting, and I think that’ll be another popular item once we get that to market,” he said.
Eide’s proudest moment so far? Taking his mom to the store and showing her a jar of Ardell Salsa on the shelf.
“She really loves it. She has not contacted any sort of patent attorney yet to sue me for her ingredients, which is always nice,” he joked. “Yeah, we don’t have lawsuits in the family. But no, she’s really proud of me.”
She even likes it spicier now than she used to.
“For the longest time, you know, she’s worried about me being a stay-at-home dad, and what about my career and all that stuff,” he said.
Now, Eide jokes that the company gives him a leg up in the sibling rivalry department.
“It is the ultimate one up on my overachieving sisters, the siblings, you know, it’s just like, ‘Oh, did you start a company and name it after mom?’ So I can always say that,” he said. “And then I’ll just tell them I’m sure she loves you in her own way.”
Looking to the future, Eide hopes to grow distribution into King County and the greater Seattle market. Ultimately, he dreams of opening a dedicated production facility with labeling and sorting equipment.
“At the core of it I know it’s a good product,” he said. “I watch people sample it at farmers markets or other places, and you can just see that click in their mind, and you’re like, ‘Oh, okay, yes, this is good,’ you know, this is not just some average salsa.”
Eide is confident that once people try it, they’ll be hooked. His goal is to scale enough to bring down the price point, while still maintaining the salsa’s premium quality.
“It’s been very fortunate for me to start on Bainbridge Island, because people on Bainbridge really support their own,” he said. “It’s one of the really interesting quirks about Bainbridge that I love.”
For Eide, though, success won’t be measured only by profit or production scale. He’s aiming for something more personal.
“I think I will feel like ultimate success if I just randomly run into someone in the wild that talks about my salsa,” he said. “Like someone’s like, ‘Oh, you’re from Bainbridge? Have you had this salsa?’ or however it comes up.”
Leave a Reply