Joe Holleman Joe Holleman is a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Follow Joe Holleman Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today

STL sauce sultan Freddie Lee James looked out on the gravel lot behind his shop in the industrial guts of downtown St. Louis.

"Welcome to the world headquarters of 'Freddie Lee's Ghetto Sauce,'" James said with a laugh as he stood at the back service door of his company's first official office.

"We're just getting too busy to not have a place of our own," James said.

The 2,700 square-foot facility is at Second and Biddle streets, next door to the Lumiere Casino.

The new digs will allow James to increase production by at least 20 percent. It also will allow him and his wife/business partner, Deborah James, to move the company's office out of their house.

James said he will hire six employees, since he and his wife can no longer handle the cooking by themselves.

This saucy tale began years ago on a stove in the couple's kitchen in the Greater Ville neighborhood of north St. Louis. Because so many friends and relatives gave them jars to fill with their sauce, James decided to turn his home hobby into a business.