Through the encouragement of his mother, Doretea Burton, culinary genius, Andy Burton, began his entrepreneurship journey in 2008 at age five. When she assigned a task to create a business as a homeschool project, Andy’s very first business was selling cookies.
He continued to stick with the brand, Andy Factory, even when he delved into making, fine-tuning, and personalizing his mother’s mumbo sauce till he invented his prized sauce, which he called Uncle Andy’s Mambo sauce. According to ShoutoutAtlanta, his sauce was a hit and sold out within a few hours at his first fair.
When requests for the sauce continued to flow, his mum advised him to share it with the world. To get things running, his older brother, Nyles, decided to hop on and join the brand to help Andy get over his nervousness about launching his business, and now runs the administrative side of the brand.
Andy explains that he changed the name of the sauce to Uncle Dell’s Mambo Sauce in honor of his maternal grandfather, Lt. Col Wardell Guyton aka Poppy. He shared that his grandfather played a big role in teaching him about people management and keeping one’s word.
However, their parents’ divorce came along with some financial challenges, which caused Andy and Nyles to officially register Andy Factory as an LLC in 2019, according to the Washington Post. They later made a decision to bottle the sauce and sell it since so many people already knew and loved it.
Andy’s business, which started off as a small project, has seen a great increase and yield since its inception, and has been patronized by some well-known restaurants and eateries including Ella Ray’s Café in Forestville, Dyvine BBQ in Dumfries, and Foxtrot in the District. To him, mambo sauce is one of the pre-gentrified artifacts of DC, Essence reported.
The young entrepreneur shared that his mum saw his gifting early and supported him from the start. He even started a Burton Brothers snow shoveling business with his brother Nyles, and recalls that they ended up taking way too many customers, and failed at the tasks they were supposed to handle in their second year of operation.
They had to analyze their failure and write apology letters to all their neighbors explaining their faults. Some customers remained until the brothers turned fifteen. Andy disclosed that he still yearned to own his own business after that experience.
Andy was 15 while Nyles was 17 at the start of their company in 2019; he boasts that their sauce has more personality than others, as it continues to remain one of the best in the city. According to the Capital Gazette, the brothers began shipping their online orders after the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Andy Factory’s Uncle Dell Mambo Sauce can be purchased on the company’s website. There are three flavors in all; cocktail, spicy, and original.
