In 2002, she decided to try her hand at creating a line of sauces she could sell. She does all the hard work like “the grinding and blending of spices,” says Maya. Costumers just have to simmer the sauces with veggies or meat.

It took Maya 6 months of working in her kitchen to perfect her first sauces. She modified each recipe up to 30 times to get just what she wanted. Then, the next step was to figure out how to take her recipes and modify them to work in a 200-gallon steam kettle. It took a lot of tweaking, but with the manufacturer’s help, she got it just right.

Business really started booming when a distributor started selling the sauces to Whole Foods Markets. In the summer of 2005, a fourth sauce was released. Shortly after that, Williams-Sonoma reps had her create two sauces exclusively for their stores. The sauces sold so well that the stores tripled their orders.

Sales now are expected to be over 1.5 million.