The History of Texas Pete Hot Sauce

In 1929, Sam Garner, his wife Ila Jane, and their seven children needed a way to make ends meet at the outset of the Great Depression. Although an attempt at running a restaurant near their home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina failed, it left the family with an inherited recipe for a popular barbecue sauce. Ila Jane and the children continued to make the sauce in their home kitchen while Sam traveled all over the surrounding area selling it. Reportedly, while Sam was traveling around to sell their barbecue sauce, customers suggested making it spicier. The family decided to develop a whole new sauce using hot red peppers, vinegar, and salt. That sauce became known as Texas Pete and got its commercial start in 1936. The name came from their attempts to choose an “American name” for their product — the Texas portion was intended to evoke the spicy Mexican foods of the region while Pete was the nickname of one of Sam’s sons. It also evoked cowboy imagery, which was popular at the time due to the many cowboy movies in theaters. In 1946, Sam and three of his sons — Thad, Ralph, and Harold — incorporated their food business into the T.W. Garner Food Company. Their Texas Pete hot sauce became quite popular and some of the company’s products were even included in World War II rations. Today, the company continues to produce Texas Pete hot sauce — and despite some controversy and confusion around its non-Texan roots, the brand is still produced in its home state of North Carolina today.