HOLY! Chili Oil... a Sizzle-Steeped Family Recipe is Rewriting Calgary's Pantry Rules

Farmers’ markets in Calgary are largely a theater of the artisanal—a place where trendy cheeses and pricey pickles reign supreme. You expect to be charmed, and tempted, sure. You don't expect to be completely reprogrammed.

HOLY! Chili Oil is changing the game.

You are looking at the next Sriracha, but before the corporate buyout and the inevitable recipe change. Behind the jar is Farren P. Power, a man who didn't come from a Michelin-starred kitchen. He came from property maintenance. As a serial entrepreneur, he traded physical grunts for culinary architecture, attributing the brutal transition to raw grit and an unshakable faith. Alongside Co-Founder Nancy Power and Small-Batch Specialist Monica “Mama Dukes” Power, Farren built a brand not on culinary idealism, but on aggressive opportunism.

The origin story wasn't a slow burn; it was a vehicular epiphany. For years, Farren and his family talked the idea to death. Then, in March 2025, driving down Macleod Trail, they spotted a Gluten-Free Expo at the BMO Centre. They didn't have a retail-ready empire—they had an unfinished concept. They cold-called the organizers, secured a last-minute slot, and pushed their product to the shelf in record time.

"We had lineups from 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM," Farren notes, describing the immediate validation. After a massive Taco Fest in Lethbridge and a complete sell-out at the Saskatoon Farm, the absolute truth set in: Calgary was starved for this.

Every craft brand needs an origin myth. For HOLY!, it is the mother-in-law’s ancestral recipe. But the brilliance of the operation lies in its total lack of sentimentality. They didn't preserve the recipe—they gutted it. The traditional Taiwanese sauces and MSG were stripped out, replaced by a ruthlessly clean, health-conscious profile.

"To be honest, we ended up changing it completely," Farren admits. They kept the soul of the traditional oil but completely re-engineered the mechanics, sourcing unique peppers from around the world to build a modern flavor profile.

They achieved this through method over madness. The industry standard for commercial chili oil is inherently lazy: flash-fry flakes with scorching oil, risk burning the ingredients, and bottle the bitter aftermath. HOLY! uses a precision "sizzle-steeped" extraction. It is a low-temperature infusion that pulls the deep, nuanced flavors of the aromatics without the raw, punishing heat.

The resulting lineup is a real-time reflection of Calgary’s shifting palate. When they needed something for a Latin festival, they developed Limelight, an immediate smash. For Canada Day, they launched Maple, and the city devoured it in two hours. Today, Maple, Mango Messiah, and Sins of Szechuan serve as the brand's holy trinity of bestsellers.

But a true craft operation requires knowing when to dump a misfire. A brief foray into a honey-infused oil resulted in a coagulated disaster they dubbed "Honey Clusters." It sold, but the texture was wrong, so they killed it immediately. They also learned the hard way that using mango puree ruined shelf stability—a quick pivot to mango powder saved Mango Messiah and cemented its status as the undisputed fan favorite.

The branding itself—innovative, bold, and unapologetically fun—wasn't workshopped in a downtown agency. It was an accident in a shared commercial kitchen. While debating names, another tenant rounded the corner, caught the sizzle-steeped aroma, and shouted, "HOLY! That smells good!" Farren looked up, accepted the divine intervention, and the brand was baptized on the spot.

The reality of "small-batch" production, however, is brutally physical. On a random Tuesday morning, there is no glamour for Mama Dukes and the team—just the manual processing of whole pepper pods and hand-chopping fresh ingredients. Every single unit is produced by hand.

The local ecosystem, anchored by heavy support from The Local Hub, incubated the brand. Now, the endgame is in motion. Having survived the brutal bottlenecks of shared kitchens and massive ingredient sourcing, HOLY! recently secured corporate approval for Sobeys. The plan is total regional saturation—stocking the shelves of Safeway, Sobeys, and Co-op locations to make their oil a household baseline.

Total regional domination is inevitable. Until then, you'll get it where you can and put it on everything. Even things you shouldn't.

"The biggest surprise was a Peanut Butter and Jam sandwich," Farren says, noting his eight-year-old forced the pairing on him for lunch. "I was skeptical, but it was absolutely amazing. The sweet, salty, and spicy combo is a game-changer.

HOLY! Chili Oil is available through their website, and at a growing list of retailers in Calgary and area.