Giving away free samples has long been a trick of food entrepreneurs who want to create a buzz around their new recipes, from hempseed granola bars to pecan-bacon cookies. But the makers of a new line of Indian-American hot sauces plan to take the concept a step further – by infiltrating the cafeterias of Silicon Valley technology start-ups to put free bottles of Spicy Mango and Cilantro Mint Chili sauce on every table.

The founders of Bandar Foods, which means “monkey” or “mischievous boy” in Hindi (and can sometimes be an insult), are en-listing friends at Twitter and Zynga in a renegade distribution strategy: having them sneak the sauces into the tech companies’ lunchrooms, then report back what people say about them.

Getting within arm’s reach of thousands of hungry engineers and designers across the region, where free company lunches are a given, seems a much more efficient form of marketing than handing out samples to random shoppers at the grocery store. Add in that many tech company employees are first or second-generation immigrants from India, and the Bandar founders bel-ieve they have found the perfect taste testers to jump-start a word-of-mouth campaign.