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In October 2004, Palmetto Pepper Potions LLC, the company Mark and his wife, Julie, created, won a First Place Scovie Award, the food industry's top award recognizing hot and spicy foods. The Columbia, S.C., based company produces three handcrafted hot sauce flavors – Daily Red©, Larynx Lava© and Molten Golden©. It was Molten Golden, a Caribbean-style mango, red habanero, mustard, curry and cumin concoction, that captured the first place win as determined by a panel of the country's top culinary experts. There were more than 600 products competing.
“It was very exciting to receive an international award during our first few months of business,” said Mark. It all began when a friend gave him a huge assortment of pepper plants – enough to landscape his property. “There were so many plants we started experimenting with hot sauces and salsa,” said Mark. “My wife loves to cook and we both have very adventuresome palates, so we began coming up with unique mixtures of the peppers and fruits.”
Mark and Julie started giving the products away and soon built quite a fan base. They began researching how to start a business and then chose a professional bottling company to batch-scale the recipes and bottle the sauces. “We signed a non-disclosure agreement to protect the recipes we created and the bottling company now produces them to our specifications,” said Mark. Palmetto Pepper Potions uses fresh, natural ingredients, with an emphasis on developing unusual flavors that have exceptional fire. “Red habaneros are our signature pepper and we use them in all of our flavors,” he added.
The products are sold online at www.pepperpotions.com as well as a number of specialty grocery stores in the southeast. They have recently shipped their products to stores as far away as Costa Rica and Newfoundland.
A native of Clarksburg, Mark has many fond memories of Marshall in the late ’80s and ’90s. He had many friends and a great social life while at Marshall. He was a member of Pi Kappa Phi at its inception on campus. It wasn’t easy for Mark though. While a freshman at Wheeling Jesuit College, he was in an automobile accident that broke his neck, rendering him a quadriplegic. After time spent at a rehabilitation center in Pittsburgh, Pa., Mark decided to come to Marshall where the terrain is virtually flat. “There were still some obstacles, though,” said Mark. “I worked hard as part of Student Government to make improvements around campus, such as getting sidewalks and crevices fixed and making stadium seating more accessible to those in wheelchairs. I felt very passionate about this cause.”
Mark’s academic advisor was Steve Hensley, dean of student affairs. “He was a great guy,” said Mark. “He helped me with my schedule to make my classes as accessible as possible, and we had many candid discussions about my disability and about campus life.”
Mark also serves with the Columbia, S.C., Mayor’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities and Advocates for the Rights of Citizens with Disabilities (ARC of the Midlands). Plus, he is a player and president of the board of directors of Limitless Sports, an organization that funds wheelchair basketball and provides recreation and sporting activities for people with disabilities. Mark’s hobbies are gardening, hotsaucing, music, travel, wheelchair basketball, quad rugby, hunting and fishing.
Julie Riffle is a freelance writer and coordinates communications for Palmetto Health Children’s Hospital. |
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Mark “Riff” Riffle claims to have
inherited the “hot spicy food gene” from his parents and
grandparents, not to mention an affinity for gardening and fresh
foods. But he was the one who made this passion into a business,
and a very successful business it has become.
This disability didn’t get in the
way of Mark’s career any more than it did in his pursuit of a
college education. He graduated from Marshall in 1991 with a
degree in political science, and with a master’s in public
administration from the University of South Carolina in 1993. As
a recruitment manager for the Division of Human Resources
Management in the South Carolina Department of Disabilities and
Human Needs, Mark recruits professional and technical staff
members for the agency.     |
