| Tell us about your company: |
| Little Zing is a small batch condiment company built around a 100 year old Danish mustard recipe passed down from founder Houston Buehrle’s great grandmother, Helle Jorgensen. What started as a holiday tradition made by Houston’s father Peter has grown into something Houston felt was too good to keep within the family. Every bottle of Little Zing is a drizzle ready mustard made for modern kitchens. Simple ingredients, no preservatives, and a creamy texture that goes way beyond what you’d expect from the mustard aisle. Whether you’re spreading it, drizzling it or dipping into it, it’s designed to be the most interesting thing on your plate. Little Zing is based in Carlsbad, California and is available at premium retailers across the country as well as online. This is not a corporate recipe. It’s a family recipe that survived four generations and we think you’ll taste the difference. |
| What inspired you to start your business? |
| My great grandmother Helle Jorgensen brought this mustard recipe with her from Denmark nearly 100 years ago. My father Peter kept it alive by making it every holiday season and gifting it to friends and family. It was one of those things everyone looked forward to and talked about every single year. After my dad passed away I didn’t want the recipe to die with the tradition. I wanted to keep it going and share it with more people than just our inner circle. That’s really where Little Zing came from. But there was something else too. Walk down the mustard aisle at any grocery store and you already know what you’re going to find. The same yellow squeeze bottles. The same brown jars. The same two or three flavors that have been sitting in the same spot for decades. Sharp, one dimensional, and designed to be invisible. Something you put on a hot dog and forget about. The whole category has been playing it safe for so long that it forgot mustard could actually be something worth getting excited about. My great grandmother’s recipe was proof that mustard could be so much more than that. Creamy, punchy, drizzle ready, made with simple honest ingredients and no preservatives. A drizzle ready mustard made for modern kitchens that actually makes you stop and think about what you just put in your mouth. So I launched Little Zing to honor my dad, carry on my great grandmother’s legacy, and show people what mustard can actually be. That’s still the mission every single day. |
| What are your proudest achievements so far? |
| Getting Little Zing onto the shelves of retailers I grew up shopping at as a kid in Southern California is something I genuinely have to pinch myself about. Gelson’s, Erewhon, Bristol Farms, these are stores I walked through with my family growing up. Seeing a product I made from my great grandmother’s recipe sitting on those shelves is something I don’t think I’ll ever take for granted. Beyond those we’ve also landed in Berkeley Bowl, Nugget Markets, Lazy Acres, Jimbo’s, Lassen’s, Seaside Market, Lunardi’s and more. Getting into premium independent retailers across California without a big sales team or outside investment behind us is something I’m really proud of. We’re also proud of what we’re trying to do to the mustard category itself. For decades mustard has been one of the most ignored and uninspired sections of the grocery store. Same bottles, same flavors, same one dimensional taste. Little Zing is our attempt to change that conversation entirely. A drizzle ready mustard made for modern kitchens with real ingredients, real heritage, and flavors that actually make people stop and pay attention. We want people to think about mustard differently and we think we’re starting to prove that’s possible. And underneath all of it is the thing I’m most proud of. My dad’s recipe is reaching people it never would have reached otherwise. Strangers all over the country are buying it, tasting it, and coming back for more. That’s the one that really gets me. We’re just getting started but the foundation feels strong and I’m proud of how we built it. |
| What advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs: |
| The biggest piece of advice I can give is to just start. Seriously. Don’t wait until the product is perfect, the branding is perfect, the website is perfect. None of it will ever feel ready enough. The entrepreneurs who win are the ones who start before they feel ready and figure it out as they go. Make sure you have something genuinely unique though. Not slightly different. Actually different. The world doesn’t need another version of something that already exists. Find the thing that makes people stop and say they’ve never seen that before. For us it was a 100 year old Danish family recipe that nobody else has. Find your version of that. Once you start, never stop. That sounds simple but it’s the hardest part. There will be weeks where nothing is working, where the sales don’t come, where you question everything. Every entrepreneur goes through it. The ones who build something real are the ones who refused to quit when it got hard. Persistence is the most underrated skill in business. You also don’t need a perfect product to start selling. You need a good enough product and real feedback from real customers. The market will tell you what to fix. You can’t get that feedback sitting on the sidelines waiting for everything to be perfect. Build something you genuinely believe in, something with a real story behind it, and then just keep going no matter what. The compounding effect of showing up every single day is more powerful than any shortcut or strategy out there. Start. Stay unique. Never stop. |
| Please share a memory or thought about your alma mater: |
| USC will always hold a special place for me. It’s where the entrepreneurship bug really took hold and never let go. What I remember most is sitting in entrepreneurship class and just being completely locked in. Not because I had to be but because I genuinely couldn’t get enough of it. The frameworks, the case studies, the idea that you could build something from nothing and make it real. It lit something up in me that never really turned off. But the moments that stuck with me most were when alumni would come in and share their journeys. Those talks made everything feel possible in a way that a textbook never could. You’d sit there thinking if they figured it out then maybe I can too. I don’t think I fully appreciated in those moments how much that would shape the way I think and operate. But looking back it’s clear. The bootstrapped mindset, the willingness to just start, the belief that a small scrappy operation can compete with anyone if you have something truly unique and you refuse to quit. A lot of that got planted at USC. Fight On! |
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