D ennis Elert has made his own pasta and pizza sauce for years, usually on weekends or at other times when his job as a commercial welder would allow.

Elert, 60, no longer peers through the dark glass of a welder’s helmet. Instead, his days are spent on the road delivering, marketing and urging others to taste what he’s been ladling over spaghetti and onto crusts since shortly after graduating from East High School in 1972.

Only now his sauce is in glass jars on the shelves of 38 grocery stores in Wisconsin and Illinois. Elert, who lives in Poynette, is in talks with more grocery chains, like Kroger and Publix, and is looking for an investor and a distribution company. In 2013, Elert logged more than 200,000 miles with a Nissan pickup truck and a Dodge conversion van picking up cases of his The Sauce King sauce from a contract manufacturer in Ixonia, making deliveries throughout the state and offering samples.

“I sell the heck out of it. I do four tastings a week, six hours at a shot,” Elert said. “I’ve got a lot of people who are amazed I’ve gone this far.”