Sauce brand Firebarns tried spicing up Quebec grocery aisles ahead of the Super Bowl on Sunday.

“Point of sale is really important for a business like ours,” says co-founder Frank Ménard, because if you’re an unknown brand, people buy with their eyes, especially if there is something compelling, like a cool, funny logo of a bulldog’s face or high quality ingredients.

In advance of the Super Bowl, Firebarns was displayed with poultry brand Flamingo, with which it has had a long relationship heroeing chicken and ribs sauce, honey mustard and cayenne.

“The co-branding with Flamingo is…a perfect match,” Ménard says, although there is no formal association with that brand. The “ton alignment pour le grand match” messaging is authentic, he explains, as he’s a big sports fan.

The Super Bowl provides a natural tie-in with Firebarns, as consumers associate football with burgers, poutine, pizza and buffalo wings, and it does something big adjacent to the game, despite being a relatively young brand, celebrating its eight-year anniversary in July.

All the marketing, packaging and and displays are done in-house, and the company has close broker relationships, with approximately 1,000 sales outlets and more than 300 restaurants throughout Quebec.

“We have a nice variety of sauces,” he says.

Firebarns found itself with a hit on its hands with its 2019 BBQ sauce line, and has since expanded into spices and condiments. Its line of hot sauces is doing particularly well, Ménard says. In fact, Firebarns sauces will be coming to French retailer Carrefour, a deal that was a year in the making, and the company has designs on hitting the Belgian and Swiss markets next.

During the summer BBQ season, Firebarns also came to life at Metro, IGA, Sobeys Quebec locations with prominent backyard-style displays, complete with picket fences and images of smoky grills and, of course, Barney the bulldog.