Casper Start-Up Challenge Finalists Jim and Lauren Childs on recovery, Jimmy’s Small Batch Salsa

*Trigger Warning*

The following story focuses on themes of addiction and mental health. If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, call or text the Crisis Lifeline at 988.

Those who have lived in Casper for a certain amount of time have undoubtedly been to La Cocina, one of the town’s preeminent Mexican restaurants. La Cocina is owned by the Childs family, specifically Jim and his wife, Andrea. They’ve owned and operated the restaurant for decades, beginning with a small taco kitchen in the mid-’90s and turning it into one of, if not the best Mexican restaurant in town.

And more often than not, if you found yourself at La Cocina, you would inevitably see Jim, shaking hands, sharing jokes, walking around like he owned the place. To know Jim is to love him, many people would say. His energy is contagious, as is his smile.

But, as is often the case with the more gregarious among us, behind the brightness of that smile, there was a lot of hurt, a lot of pain, a lot of darkness. There was a secret behind Jim’s smile, and it was one that almost destroyed his restaurant…and his life.

“So, I got hooked on drugs,” Jim revealed. He said it matter-of-factly, as only somebody who’s battled addiction…and won…could do.

“I didn’t mean to,” he said. “It’s just…that’s the way it went. For about 20 years, I struggled. And the last four or five, I didn’t want to do that anymore. I had kept it a secret. Nobody knew. Or, at least, I didn’t think they knew. And it just wasn’t even fun anymore. I was chained to something and I didn’t want to be.”

Those chains first attached themselves to Jim after he had a vasectomy following the birth of his third child. Jim was given Vicodin to deal with the pain, and he took a few during his recovery, but didn’t think too much about it. Until one day, a friend of his said “take a couple of those when you’re not hurting.”

So, he did. And that was the real start of it.

“It felt like Christmas,” Jim shared. “Like Christmas had come early. It was that warm, fuzzy feeling in your tummy. And my thinking was, ‘Well, I could just take these and then I don’t have to drink.'”

It was, in retrospect, a laughable justification, Jim said. But that made it okay in his own head.

“It made me happy,” he said. “I’m already a pretty happy guy, I just always like to take things to 11, no matter what. And that’s how my own stupid thinking led me down that path.”

It’s a tale as old as time, really. And it’s a story that, far too often, has a tragic ending. But, thankfully, that’s not how this story goes.

Jim said that when he started realizing that things were out of control, that he couldn’t stop, that it just wasn’t fun anymore, he went to rehab for the first time. That moment for him, the first of two big “moments of clarity,” as they’re called, came after he accidentally overdosed.

It was a scary moment, for Jim and for his family. And though there were some stumbles, that was the moment that he finally started to get some solid footing.

“I went to treatment and then I struggled a bit, for about six months,” Jim said. “I made it three months, and then I relapsed. And then I made it another three months, and then I relapsed.

Jim, feeling ashamed and guilty and angry and sad and scared, eventually moved out of his house and rented a sober house at Wyoming Recovery.

“I’m there by myself, alone,” he said. “And it was like one of those Dairy Queen dipped ice cream cones; I felt like a cone dipped in shame and guilt. My skin didn’t fit. I was alone in a room full of people. And I felt like I had a neon sign over me that said ‘I Suck.'”

It was during that time, living alone at the sober house, that Jim finally decided he had had enough.

“I said, ‘God, I don’t want to feel like this anymore,'” he reflected. “I didn’t say, ‘God I want my wife back,’ or ‘God, I want my family back.’ I didn’t say that. I said, ‘I don’t want to feel like this anymore.’ And I heard a voice, just like I hear my own voice right now, and it said, ‘You don’t have to.’ And that was the start.”

Jim has been sober for five years. He first got clean in June of 2019. And in those five years, it hasn’t been easy. It’s been a hard journey and it’s one that will never actually let up. But he welcomed it, because it meant that he didn’t have to feel the way he was feeling anymore. He fought for his wife. He fought for his family. But mostly, he fought for himself. It’s a never-ending battle but, so far, he’s winning. And that’s all that matters. Andrea had her husband back. His children — Lauren, and Jimmy, and Abby — had their dad back. And they weren’t going to let him go.

“I think, when everything was happening, we tried to meet him where he was at, with grace,” Lauren said. “There was never really any anger, or judgment, or embarrassment. There was nothing like that. At the end of the day, we just wanted him to be okay. And this whole experience was so humbling, for him and for all of us. But it was beautiful. It made me see, more than anything, what real love is. It was like wrapping your arms around somebody and saying, ‘You’re safe. You’re not perfect, but you’re safe.'”

Jim relied on his family a lot during those days; not just his immediate family, either. He relied on the family that he built in the restaurant, as well. Truth be told, he needed all the help he could get.

Before getting clean, Jim was burning the candles at both ends. When he was on, he was on. He was cooking, he was bartending, he was waiting tables, he was washing dishes. Nobody could ever question the man’s work ethic, and that’s something that is shared by his entire family. All of them work very, very hard. And unless you knew Jim, really knew him, you wouldn’t think anything was amiss. He would work from sun-up, past sun-down, with a passion that had to be seen to be believed.

Because not every addiction is a bad thing. And the other thing that Jim was addicted to was cooking; preparing food, sharing food, inviting people to gather around his table, in his kitchen. La Cocina.

And one of the things that Jim loved to make, more anything else, was his salsa.

Ask any of La Cocina’s customers and they’ll tell you that the salsa is one of the best items on the menu. It’s made by hand, with the freshest ingredients. His customers, and his family, eat it by the jarful. In a kitchen that consistently puts out some of the best Mexican food in Casper, it’s Jimmy’s Small Batch Salsa that he is most proud of. And it’s what has made Jim and Lauren finalists in the Casper Start-Up Challenge.

“We originally wanted to start this a few years ago,” said Jim’s daughter (and business partner), Lauren. “Throughout my adult life, I’ve been working at the restaurant on and off and people always ask me ‘Where can I get this salsa?’ People come from Glenrock, and Douglas, and even Texas during the CNFR and they say that they want to take our salsa home with them. It’s just so different, You crave it. And so I said that this needs to be something that we really think about doing.”

It would be easy to say that Lauren has a bit of a bias, for obvious reasons. But Jim’s salsa is, truly, one-of-a-kind. So much so, Lauren said, that she wants to start marketing it and selling it to the masses.

“I just don’t ever get tired of it,” she beamed. “It’s just so good. So that was just kind of the initial spark. And then we moved into our new restaurant location and got our branding on point, got our vibe on point. And so I just said to him, ‘This is the time to do the salsa thing.’ Especially because, I was thinking, it’s relatively easy to pop up with a brand now. But we also want this to have deep longevity. We want it in grocery stores, next to Pace.”

Pace, Jim said, is the salsa that he remembers from his childhood. While it most certainly was not the best salsa in the world, it did have some of the best marketing. The “New York City!?” tagline is advertising that people of a certain age still remember.

“And that’s what I want our salsa to be,” Lauren said. “I want people to eat our salsa when they’re seven years old, but I also want them to be eating it at 60.”

Jim and Lauren also want it to be easy for people to eat their salsa. Far too often, when people are devouring chips and salsa, it’s virtually impossible to successfully dip said chip into the salsa jar. They’re either too slim or too short, or too…awkward… which results in having to just pour the salsa into a different container.

“I eat so much salsa,” Lauren shared. “And all of the jars…you end up having to pour them. They’re tall and skinny, or just not fat enough to get your whole chip in. So I said, ‘If we do this, we’re going to get a jar fat enough to let you use the whole chip.'”

The tagline of a specific brand of salsa says “Twist, Pour, Enjoy.”

“I don’t want to pour it!” Lauren laughed. “We don’t need to pour it. So with our salsa, you’re not going to have to do that.”

It’s not just the jar size that will help Jimmy’s Small Batch Salsa stand out.

“Lauren brought us about 12 or 13 different types of salsa, and Andrea and I sat in a booth at our restaurant and we tasted all of them,” Jim said. “And then we looked at the reviews from other people, and many of them said that these salsas always have a weird, chemical lime taste. So we called the Wyoming Department of Agriculture to see what we needed to do to become a licensed food processing place. And one of their people came in and we got licensed, and then she told us what our next steps should be. And one of those steps required me to take a Better Food Processing course, which I just completed last week.”

Jimmy’s Small Batch Salsa will be fresh, clean, and organic. Lauren said they’re trying hard to not have to use preservatives but, with something like salsa, that’s somewhat hard to do.

“If our seal that we’re working on does what it’s supposed to, we won’t have to use preservatives,” Jim said. “But if we do have to, we found a company that is vegan, and plant-based. The company doesn’t test anything on animals. It’s all very safe and clean. And we’re going to be the only salsa on the shelf that won’t have that weird, chemical, sticky aftertaste.”

In addition to the jar size and the ingredients, Lauren said that they’re really going to rely on Jim’s story; on their family’s story.

“The salsa started with La Cocina,” Jim said. “I got hooked on drugs while I was making the salsa. I got sober while I was making the salsa. And now, I’m living my best life, making that very same salsa.”

Jim has changed; his famous small batch salsa has not.

“This was what he was doing every day while he was using, and it’s what he did while trying to get sober,” Lauren said. “It was always just this ritual, this routine, that kept him alive. And then, it kept him sober. He’s never let anyone else, in the last 30 years, make it. It’s always been his. It’s always been him — showing up and making the salsa.”

So, Lauren has the plan. Jim has the story. And together, the two have become finalists in the Casper Start-Up Challenge which, according to the Advance Casper website, exists to help “new, independent businesses in the seed, start-up, or early growth stages in Natrona County.” The top three winners of the Casper Start-Up challenge will receive seed money, in addition to marketing, networking and mentorship assistance throughout the challenge and beyond.

Jim and Lauren Childs will present their business plan for Jimmy’s Small Batch Salsa during the 2024 Casper Start-Up Challenge Pitch Night, happening on Sept. 5 at Frontier Brewing Company. The Pitch Night starts at 5:30 p.m. and the public is welcome to attend and hear Jim and Lauren, as well as the other finalists, pitch their start-ups to a select, diverse panel of judges.

“The Casper Start-Up Challenge is so important — to the community and to entrepreneurs,” Jim said. “I don’t think I realized how important it was until we had to ask ourselves some tough questions in the Start-Up Challenge process, which led to me stepping out of my comfort zone, learning new things, and ultimately realizing what I am capable of creating with a business.”

What Jim and Lauren are capable of is something truly special. Like the other finalists in the Casper Start-Up Challenge, their life experiences have prepared them to take on this new adventure with grace, with optimism, and with the desire to make something good for Wyoming. Jim and Lauren know that salsa won’t change the world. But their story might. Their story might change something; it might help someone. Proceeds from each jar sold are going to rehab facilities and rescue missions and any other place that help people who are battling the same thing Jim is. Jimmy’s Small Batch Salsa, Lauren said, is a means to tell their family’s story. It’s a catalyst, a canvas, to share their story with whomever wants to hear it, or see it. Or taste it.

“With this story, with our story of addiction and sobriety and getting the family back, and the restaurant back — there’s just so much to this,” Lauren said. “It’s kind of a story of a resurrection; of what it means to be human, to fall and then get back up. I just think it’s just a beautiful story to attach to Jimmy’s Small Batch. That’s what we want this to be. We want it to be more than salsa, really. We want it to be a story.”