Blog

On February 15, 2026 we made the difficult (but inevitable) decision to officially retire the iBurn name after 14 amazing years and move the site to hotsauceboss.com.

The reason I say the move to hotsauceboss.com was inevitable was the success of the Hot Sauce Boss social media post-pandemic. It only took a year after I started creating content again to reach a million followers on TikTok. A goal that I never thought was possible, and a number iBurn was never going to reach no matter what we posted. Plus, our brick and mortar customers want a DESTINATION they could go in and shop, not the hole in the wall where we moved. There was no reasonable solution to address these problems. The biggest problem that developed after we were forced out of our original location was not having the branded storefront as the backdrop. New followers started getting confused why I kept promoting this business with a different name. One commenter wrote "Why don't you start your own site instead of sending people to iburn.com? I want to support you not some other business."

Don't get me wrong, I love the iBurn name, but every version of our little hot shop after we left the Bellaire location was just a shell of the "monster trucks, great white sharks and ninjas" store that we started. Only a fraction of our customers followed us to the smaller Hillcroft location, and we couldn't afford a retail space with the majority of our customers online. Our new landlord let us move our lease to one of their warehouse properties, which cut our rent by 50% (initially). It was a no brainer to make the move back to "online only".

The online only reboot initially had lots of potential. I was able to customize the shopping experience to my expectations for our customers, but due to a series of unfortunate events the momentum of the promotion was fading fast with little hope of returning. 

HOWEVER, Hot Sauce Boss is just getting started! My collab with Commerce.com is still in full force, and we even renewed it for another year!