Goran Vrabec is today the largest Croatian producer of hot sauces made from chili peppers. Since 2018, he has recorded an annual growth of approximately 30 percent, started with the help of his parents and a loan to cultivate exotic peppers in Igrišće in Zagorje, and shortly thereafter began processing them.
Today, he already owns two stores in Zagreb, and his products are on the shelves of Konzum, Kaufland, and Spar, with online sales also improving.
Vrabec’s family farm in the small village of Igrišće in Zagorje, located about 25 kilometers from Zagreb, was established in mid-January 2013, and just two years later, the company Volim Ljuto was founded. He did not enter production completely uneducated. He grew up alongside agriculture, as he always found tasks to do on his parents’ farm, where the small-scale cultivation of various crops was an additional source of income for him.
He says he started the business with zero kuna and 100 percent effort, and that the company recorded a revenue of four and a half million kuna in 2021 after seven years. However, reaching those millions was not easy. In the first year of his venture with chili peppers, Vrabec planted so many seedlings that many would consider that cultivation a hobby rather than the beginning of a new business venture.
– It all started with twenty seedlings on about ten square meters. In the second season, we already had a greenhouse of about a hundred square meters. Currently, we are on a hectare of land, most of the vegetables are protected, with three thousand square meters occupied by greenhouses, and the rest covered with hail nets. Our seedlings are grown in almost perfect conditions, so we cannot afford any diseases, and we must also account for weather disasters – explained Vrabec.
