Eat the Rich...With a Side of Guillotine Pepper Sauce

Billionaires sure do have it rough these days. The Trump tariffs are a big question mark, the markets are plunging in ways they sometimes can't take unfair advantage of, and crap in a top hat, have you seen the cost of yacht polishing these days? Egad.

And now there's a hot sauce that suggests — comedically, of course — that they should be beheaded in the town square, French-revolution style.

The website for Guillotine Pepper Sauce features the tagline "Eat the Rich," and Guillotine offers four targets in its "Oligarch Edition": Dear Leader Plump, CEO of Mega, CEO of Peppervon and Leon Sux. Any resemblance of these to Donald Trump, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk is strictly in the eye of the beholder, and purely coincidental, the creators assure you with a Swiftian wink.

Guillotine was founded by L.A. creative Charles Connon, who joined forces with Denver satirist Thad Dombrowski and artist John Zylstra. The three partners met in college and soon started an indie marketing firm serving small bands and local artists. The first foray into hot sauce was with the Philly band Mega Mango, for which Connon created Mega Mango Habanero with another college friend.

"From there, we realized that we all love political satire," says Dombrowski. "We know how to make a hot sauce, and we know how to do funny stuff. We wanted to combine all those things and do some good while also getting paid to do it. At least a little bit."

But Dombrowski makes it clear that the message is more important than the money. "Post-election in November," he says, "we all felt so disaffected. There was this sense of powerlessness. Doing satire and comedy in the past has helped me a lot in that regard. It gives you this space to do something, and to stay upbeat."

That something was to create Guillotine. While the hot sauce is the same in every bottle, the four billionaires lampooned on the labels offer a little play within the protest. "Everyone has such a different reaction," Dombrowski says. "It depends on what you're prioritizing as that thing you're most concerned about, most angry about, or who you might find most absurd."

It's also not a left/right partisan thing, according to Dombrowski: "There's this larger class divide, this much more important antagonism toward these men who so affect all of our daily lives whether we want them to or not. We wanted this product to be satirical in the sense that it includes everyone. That everyone would have a way to engage with the sentiment."

Zylstra's art on the labels pays tribute to the political cartoons of 1800s journalism. "We loved that style," Dombrowski says. "And it really came of a time in which politics was able to be constructively skewered in print. I think we need that again. It's a way to speak out your frustrations without making you feel sad. It's an aggressive brand, but it's meant to be — we want to help people vent their frustrations without feeling this deep weight, this depression and anxiety that's so commonly our modern reaction to these stresses."

The partners have another goal: to donate some of the proceeds to worthy local causes."There's such empowerment there," Dombrowski says. "Feeling like you're supporting real people doing the real work, boots on the ground stuff. It goes back to our indie work — we want to honor those small but important players in the field."

For the record, the hot sauce is not crazy hot. "Hating billionaires is for everyone," notes Dombrowski. "It's got a little kick, but it's also smoky and a hint of sweet. When we table at festivals and events, we always give out free samples, and out of the hundreds of people who have tried it — and enjoyed it, every last one! — only a couple have remarked that it was a little too spicy for them."

As for the sentiment on that sauce, Dombrowski wants to make one thing perfectly clear. "We're not advocating violence here," he says, and laughs. "This is satire. We're just making a point...and some hot sauce."

Visit the Guillotine Pepper Sauce website to order; use the code billionairesbad for a discount.