CLEVELAND — Victor Searcy Jr. is known as Chef Vic is passionate about hot chicken and his community.
“It’s all about hustle,” said Searcy.
The owner of Sauce the City started his sauce business while attending Kent State University. He called it ‘Vic Fries,” and they would travel around to fairs and carnivals selling french fries with his mouth-watering sauces.
And while flavor was his passion, a job as a nursing home administrator would soon be paying the bills. That is until he decided to take a chance, and gamble on himself. He had $700 when he bought the former Ohio City Galley and built ‘Sauce the City.’
‘Sauce the City’ is Cleveland’s destination foodie restaurant.
“We never looked back, we just go,” said Searcy.
The only thing that could slow down this go-getter, the Covid-19 pandemic that shut down restaurants.
“They basically said it wasn’t safe to be here,” said Searcy.
This hustler says he went into hibernation and changed his strategy, focusing now on take out and transforming “Sauce the City” into a super-fast casual restaurant.
“This past year if you wasn’t dedicated or super had the hustle inside of you man all the different things that came down, you would have folded, man,” said Searcy.
But Searcy wasn’t just concerned about business. He was concerned about the community and started the “Feed the nurses challenge.”
“Even though we were struggling we still saw the effect that the pandemic was having on the community and the health care workers,” said Searcy.
The idea was simple. Feed a unit of local nurses and challenge other restaurants to do the same or challenge other businesses to pick up the tag.
“I see how hard Clevelanders works for what they have. We are the community,” said Searcy.
Sauce The City is part of a 3News special called Save Our Sauce: Celebrating Northeast Ohio’s restaurants. You can help laid off restaurant workers by donating to the Ohio Restaurant Relief Fund.
You can watch our "Save Our Sauce" documentary below:
More Save Our Sauce coverage:
- Watch 'Save Our Sauce' documentary: Donate here to help restaurant workers in Northeast Ohio
- Colossal Cupcakes to reopen downtown Cleveland location
- Boss ChickNBeer puts people before profits
- Save our Sauce: Try these 10 Latin restaurants in Northeast Ohio
- Save our Sauce: 10 restaurants to try in downtown Cleveland