McIlhenny Company

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McIlhenny Company

Highway 29
A very Island, Louisiana 70513
U.S.A.
(318) 365-8175
Fax: (318) 369-6326
Web site: http://www.tabasco.com

Private Company
Incorporated:
c. 1907
Employees: 230
Sales: $105 million (1996)
SICs: 2035 Pickled Fruits & Vegetables, Etc.

Mcllhenny Company is a family-owned and operated manufacturer of Tabasco brand pepper sauce. Tabasco, perhaps the most famous of 150 pepper sauces available, actually started the pepper sauce industry. The company remains a leader in domestic pepper sauce with more than a 34 percent share of the market in the 1990s, as well as a longstanding provider of pepper sauce across the globe. As Mark Robichaux explained in the Wall Street Journal, the Mcllhenny Company still profits every day from developing the first widely sold hot sauce and, in essence, creating the market.

Early History of Avery Island

The history of the Mcllhenny Company should begin with a discussion of Avery Island, since the Tabasco sauce recipe depended on the islands salt and peppers. Located 140 miles west of New Orleans and 150 feet above sea level, Avery Islanda 2,300-acre tract located in the bayou country of Louisianaactually was the uppermost portion of a salt mountain. The largest of five such salt domes, Avery Island had rich soil, Cyprus-lined waterways, exotic flora, and ancient oaks. The earliest artifacts found on the islandstone weapons for huntingdated back 12,000 years. Evidence of mastodons and mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, and tiny three-toed horses also had been discovered there. If interpretations surrounding the basket fragments, stone implements, and Indian pottery found on the island are correct, a salt brining industry began there in 1300 A.D.

French explorers discovered the island sometime during the 18th century, and white settlers arrived in Avery Island by the centurys endwhen the Indians disappeared from the island. The salt brine springs, however, remained active, first distinguishing themselves during the War of 1812 when Andrew Jacksons troops used Avery Island salt in the Battle of New Orleans.

In 1818, Sarah Craig Marshs father purchased some land on Avery Island, then known as Isle Petite Anse. Sarah Craig Marsh later married one Daniel Dudley Avery, and their descendantsthrough time and through marriagecame to control the whole island.

Mr. Mcllhenny Visits 19th-century Louisiana and Stays

During the mid-1800s, New Orleans was one of the largest, busiest cities in the United States. It was no surprise, then, that Edmund Mcllhenny, an East Coast bank agent, should visit the city. A fifth-generation American of Scottish and Irish descent, Mcllhenny was an accomplished marksman, yachtsman, and prize-winning horse breeder who loved good food. (Once at Antoines restaurant he commented: I enjoyed this so much. I feel like starting all over again. So he did: Mcllhenny ate a second full-course dinner.)

In 1859 at the age of 43, Mcllhenny married Mary Eliza Avery, the daughter of Sarah Craig Marsh and Daniel Dudley Avery. Avery, a lawyer and judge in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, also operated a sugar plantation on his land on Isle Petite Anse. In 1862, a massive rock salt deposit was discovered on the island, so the Averys moved from the city to the island to oversee the quarrying, which supplied salt to the blockaded Confederate states. The Avery family grew wealthy cultivating the islands rock salt and marketing the salt as a meat preservative.

Mcllhenny enjoyed gardening as a hobby at the familys plantation on Isle Petite Anse. In 1848, a friend gave him some extra-spicy pepper seeds that the friend had come upon in Mexico during the Mexican-American War. (Later these peppers were identified as Capsicum frutescens. Although about 20 wild species were known in the New Worldmostly in South Americaonly about five species had been cultivated domestically. The Tabasco peppers were the only Capsicum frutescens cultivar in the United States.) Mcllhenny planted the seeds and began experimenting with recipes for a pepper sauce with which to season local southern Louisiana dishes from Spanish, French, American Indian, and African traditions.

The Civil War, however, interrupted his work. In 1863, Union troops invaded Isle Petite Anse and captured the salt quarries. The Mcllhennys and Averys fled to Texas. Upon their return, Mcllhenny and his in-laws found a changed Louisiana. A career in banking in New Orleans was out of the question after the Civil War, so the Averys and Mcllhenny relocated to Isle Petite Anse permanently and began to rebuild. The island, the salt quarry, the sugar cane all were in ruinsexcept for the pepper plants. Mcllhenny learned that the humidity caused the plants to grow heartily on the island, somotivated by dullness of Reconstruction foodhe resumed his pepper sauce experiments until he perfected a recipe that everyone seemed to enjoy.

Post-Civil War Recipe for Success

Mcllhennys recipe was elegantly simple. He mashed the peppers the day he harvested them, mixed them with a little Avery Island salt (a half coffee cup of salt for each gallon of crushed peppers), aged the mixture for 30 days in wooden barrels, added the best French wine vinegar, aged the mixture another 30 dayshand stirring to blend the flavorsand strained the naturally bright red sauce into old perfume bottles sealed with green wax and topped with shakers. Family and friends suggested selling that famous sauce Mr. Mcllhenny makes for additional income, so Mcllhenny began marketing his creation.

Mcllhenny thought about naming his pepper sauce Petite Anse Sauce after his island home. Other family members, however, did not share Mcllhennys enthusiasm for using this name for a commercial product, so he called the sauce Tabascoa Central American Indian word meaning land where soil is hot and humid.Mcllhennys Tabasco sauce became the original hot saucenow a trademark and service mark of the Mcllhenny Company.

In 1868, Mcllhenny sent 350 samples to wholesalers in New Yorkincluding the B.C. Hazard Grocery Company, owned by the cousin of a friend. By 1869 Mcllhenny received thousands of orders for the sauce at $1.00 a bottle. The wholesalers even sent Tabasco sauce as far away as England. In 1870 Mcllhenny received a U.S. Letters Patent for his Tabasco brand pepper sauce. He quit banking and began a full-time career in pepper sauce manufacturing.

In 1872, Mcllhenny established a London office to meet the heavy demands of the European market for Tabasco sauce. Throughout its history, Tabasco sauce remained a favorite in England. For example, when the products availability in Great Britain became threatened by the Buy British campaign of the isolationist British government in 1932, a crisis of national proportions erupted. Unhappy without their pepper saucea staple in the House of Commons dining roomMembers of Parliament protested and, with support of the press, the Buy Britishmotto became Buy Tabasco.

John Avery Mcllhenny Continues the Tradition, 1890s

When Edmund Mcllhenny died in 1890, his son John Avery Mcllhenny assumed control of making the Tabasco sauce. Immediately upon taking his new position, John Mcllhenny visited established commercial Tabasco customers throughout the United States. He intended to familiarize himself with existing accounts and to court new business. Some of his marketing efforts included bill posters; large wooden signs in fields near cities; drummers canvassing house-to-house in selected cities; exhibits at food expositions; circulars and folders; and free trial-size samples. (Ironically, the companys marketing strategies changed little since John Mcllhennys plans. The Mcllhenny Company relied heavily on print ads in trade and consumer periodicals to market Tabasco sauce throughout its history. It was many years from its establishment before the Mcllhenny Companys first television commercial in 1985, although both print and TV ads were used widely in the 1990s.)

John Mcllhenny also commissioned an opera company to perform the Burlesque Opera of Tabasco. When in 1893 Harvards Hasty Pudding Club asked permission to use Tabasco in one of its reviews, John Mcllhenny bought the rights to the review and staged it in New York. Samples of Tabasco sauce were given away during the shows matinee performances. Other early marketing efforts included promotions such as a grocery store contest with a $3,000 prize and offers for famous painting reproductions in exchange for a Tabasco coupon and a 10 cents handling charge.

Company Perspectives:

Edmund Mcllhenny had perfected a unique method of processing red peppers into a sauce. In fact, the method was granted a patent by the federal government. Succeeding generations have protected the Mcllhenny heritage. Some member of the family has always personally shepherded Tabasco sauce through every step of the way from pepper harvesting through processing, through the wine-like fermenting and aging in white-oak barrels, to final blending and bottling. Family control is total.... The Mcllhenny heritage is as bright as the color of the red Tabasco sauce.

In 1898, John Avery Mcllhenny joined the First Volunteer Calvary of the U.S. Army, serving as a Rough Rider with Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan Hill. Mcllhenny traveled extensively after the Spanish-American War. In 1906 he left Louisiana to work for his friend President Roosevelt at the U.S. Civil Service Commission, eventually becoming the U.S. Minister Plenipotentiary to Haiti in 1922. Under John Avery Mcllhennys direction, the familys Tabasco business grew tenfold.

Mr. Ned

In 1907, Edmund Avery Mcllhenny (Mr. Ned), the second son of the inventor of Tabasco sauce, became president of the just-formed Mcllhenny Company, which was created to manufacture and market Tabasco sauce. Mr. Neds brother, food authority Rufus Avery Mcllhenny, served as the new companys production supervisor during this time. Rufus Mcllhenny was also responsible for engineering and purchasing.

Mr. Ned grew the business both domestically and internationally, as well as successfully defended the company in several trademark infringement suits attempted by competing companies. Many competing pepper sauces were regional imitations of Tabasco sauce but, unlike competing brands, Tabasco contained no food colorings, stabilizers, garlic, or other ingredients. Tabasco also was the only national brand aged for three years in white-oak barrels. Other pepper sauces were made from cayenne peppers, which ranked between 1,000 and 3,000 on the Scoville Scale. (A pharmacist named Wilbur Scoville devised a scale by which to judge the intensity of hot peppers and related products. He reserved a zero rating for the mildest of peppers, i.e., an ordinary bell pepper. Mayan habanero peppersthe hottest of the hotmeasured about 350,000 on the pharmacists scale.) Tabasco sauce, however, was made from Capsicum peppers, so it rated higher on the scale than competing cayenne-pepper products: between 9,000 and 12,000. Tabasco sauce was not just an old stand-by, revealed John Mariani in Sports Afield, but a lovely, aromatic, beautifully balanced sauce with a true Louisiana vinegar tang to it.

Tabasco Sauce and the Environment

In addition to developing the Mcllhenny Company, Mr. Ned preserved the natural environment of Avery Island through a variety of conservation efforts. Before becoming the companys president, Mr. Neda self-trained biologisttraveled the world on scientific expeditions. When Mr. Ned returned to Avery Island to run operations at the Tabasco factory, he realized that the snowy egreta bird native to Louisianawas all but extinct from plume hunters pillaging the species for feathers for ladies hats. Mr. Ned captured eight snowy egrets and established a colony for them in which to multiply and live safely. Thousands of egrets and migratory birds have found homes since then in the Bird City rookery on Avery Island. In the 1990s, 20,000 snowy egrets and other water birds could be found on the island.

Mr. Ned also brought the nutriafast-breeding, brown furry rodents with webbed feet and long, hairless tailsfrom South America to Louisiana in the 1930s. Plant life, too, was protected by Mr. Ned. When oil was found on Avery Island in 1942, Mr. Ned insisted that work crews bury pipelines or paint them green to blend with the surrounding Jungle Gardens.

Walter Stauffer Mcllhenny and the 1940s

The son of John Avery Mcllhenny succeeded Mr. Ned as the leader of Mcllhenny Company. The great-great-grandson of President Zachary Taylor (on his mothers side), Walter Stauffer Mcllhenny joined the family business during the 1940s. He built the brick Tabasco sauce plant and brought new management and marketing techniques to the company. Under his guidance, Mcllhenny Company stayed true to its traditions. Walter Mcllhenny refused offers to sell the business and recoiled from changing the recipe for Tabasco sauce. In fact, Walter Mcllhennys production process remained virtually unchanged from his ancestors.

As others before him, Walter Mcllhenny planted 75 acres of peppers on Avery Island. Workers hand-picked the hot peppers when they ripened. (He equipped each worker with le petit baton rouge (a red stick) by which to identify the correct shade of ripe peppers.) Walter Mcllhenny himself hand weighed the days harvest. Then the harvested peppers were chopped and packed with a little Avery Island salt in 50 gallon white-oak wooden barrels for three years. When properly aged, the pepper mash was inspected personally by Mcllhenny. Then vinegar was added to the mixture, which was stirred by a mechanical arm for about four weeks (a rare modification of Edmund Mcllhennys hand stirring of the mixture with wooden paddles). Finally, the mixture was strained of seeds and pepper skins and bottled, but only the mixture went into the containers. No preservatives, additives, coloring, or flavoring ever went into a bottle of Tabasco sauce.

Tabasco Sauce Goes to War

Nicknamed Tabasco Mac by his fellow Marine Corps reservists, Walter Mcllhenny served his country as well as his company with distinction. Stationed at Guadalcanal, he received the Navy Cross and a Silver Star during World War II before earning the rank of Brigadier General. He, too, was a distinguished marksman and a member of the Presidents One Hundred. Since soldiers were close to his heart, Walter Mcllhenny created a C-ration cookbook for use by members of the U.S. Armed Forces during the Vietnam Conflict. Knowing that the U.S. Armed Forces used Tabasco sauce liberally on their C-rations, Walter Mcllhenny produced the Charley Ration Cookbook; or, No Food Is Too Good for the Man up Front.Copies were sent to soldiers with bottles of Tabasco sauce. Walter Mcllhenny even designed a Tabasco bottle holster that attached to a cartridge belt. This tradition continued into the Gulf War when every third MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) contained a small package of Tabasco sauce and a recipe booklet. Eventually every MRE included Tabasco sauce.

Those Hot Pepper Plants

Walter Mcllhenny continued to select personally the pepper seeds for the next crop from the plants grown on Avery Island. The seeds were treated, dried, and stored on the island and in a bank vault until the next years planting. Up until the 1960s, all plants used for Tabasco sauce were grown on Avery Island. When a shortage of harvesters caused concern, the company turned to the land and laborers of Mexico for planting and harvesting the pepper crops. (Mechanical harvesters proved less competitive than Latin American workers for the company.) Though all pepper plants start on the island, Avery Island peppers accounted for only a small amount of the peppers used in production since the 1960s. Peppers grown in Columbia, Honduras, Venezuela, or other countries eventually comprised about 90 percent of those used in manufacturing. In addition to the labor considerations, the company adopted this practice to ensure a constant supply of peppers since the Avery Island crop could be imperiled by disease or weather; for example, Hurricane Andrew threatened (but did no lasting damage to) the Avery Island pepper crop and Tabasco factory in 1992.

The growing cycle for the pepper plants remained unchanged over the years: workers planted seeds in greenhouses in January. In April, seedlings were moved to their respective fields on Avery Island or abroad. Workers harvested peppers by hand beginning in August.

Edward Mcllhenny Simmons and the 1990s

Like his predecessors, Edward Mcllhenny Simmons, the companys next president and a great-grandson of Tabascos inventor, remained personally involved in the growing of peppers and making of Tabasco sauce. He continued the tradition of selecting 1,200 pepper plants annually for 70 pounds of seeds for future crops. Simmons stored 20 pounds of the seeds in a bank vault in New Iberia and 50 pounds at the companys headquarters as a safeguard against crop loss.

So Tabasco sauce production continued as it had for more than 100 years. As Robichaux wrote: The shape of the bottle has changed little, as has the process of making the sauce. Nevertheless, the Mcllhenny Company expanded the Tabasco line over the years to include chili powder, seasoned salt, and popcorn seasonings. The company also created a Bloody Mary mix, a Seven-Spice Chili recipe, and a picante sauce for Tabasco consumers. Weve been a one-product company long enough, said Edward Mcllhenny Simmons in Americana magazine in 1991.

The year 1991 also brought the first acquisition for the company. Mcllhenny Company purchased Trappeys Fine Foods, manufacturer of Red Devil pepper sauce and other seasoning-related items. The Mcllhenny Company marketed these recently acquired products under a new name: Mcllhenny Farms. The acquisition allowed the company to offer a wider variety of merchandise, including pepper jelly, ketchup, and molasses.

The amount of Tabasco sauce manufactured daily of course grew with demand. During the 1990s millions of bottles of the sauce had been sold throughout the world, with production requiring labels to be printed in no less than 15 languages. In 1996, for example, more than 50 million bottles of Tabasco sauce were sold in at least 105 countries. Canada alone used 250,000 bottles in one year. Japan, the largest consumer of Tabasco sauce abroad, imported the sauce for sushi, spaghetti, and pizza recipes.

By 1997, the factory on Avery Island operated four production lines. In total, 450,000 two-ounce bottles could be manufactured daily with all lines in operation. (Each two-ounce bottle typically contained about 720 drops of Tabasco sauce, so the factory had the potential to manufacture about 324 million drops of Tabasco sauce each day in 1997.)

On the Web

The company also launched an interesting and unusual interactive web sitePepperFestin 1996 to reach the multitude of Tabasco consumers. With users of Tabasco products located all over the world, explained executive vice president Paul C. P. Mcllhenny in a press release, it just makes sense to offer accessible information via the World Wide Web. We want people to have fun visiting our PepperFest, and at the same time we welcome their feedback and suggestions.

The Sauce with Universal Appeal

Indeed, Tabasco might be a household word throughout the world. Mcllhennys pepper sauce traveled to Khartoum with Lord Kitchener, revealed Pat Mandell in Americana, and was carried on Himalayan expeditions, in the mess kits of World War I doughboys, and aboard Skylab. It is the quintessential ingredient in Bloody Marys. Its pungent flavor enlivens gumbos, eggs, steaks and stews, salads, chicken a la king, French onion soup, and jambalaya. The pepper sauce even was approved for Kosher cooking. As the first commercial hot sauce ever, the elixir, its founder, and his descendants became known in legend, lore, and fact for creating a new product and a market. As Cal Garrett, a manager with rival Durkees Red Hot sauce, said: Theyve built a great niche.

Further Reading

Callahan, Maureen, Fifteen Foods with Hidden Healing Power, Redbook, October 1991, p. 138.

Deveny, Kathleen, Rival Hot Sauces Are Breathing Fire at Market Leader Tabasco, Wall Street Journal, January 7, 1993, p. B1.

Mandell, Pat, Louisiana Hot, Americana, February 1991, pp. 26-32.

Mariani, John, In Praise of (Very Hot) Sauces, Sports Afield, May 1996, p. 50.

Mcllhenny Company: Announcing the Tabasco Sauce Ultimate Summer Cookout Online Sweepstakes, M2 Presswire, May 16, 1997.

Mcllhenny Company, Ask Mr. Broussard, the Tabasco Historian, PepperFest: A Livin , Breathin Festival on the World Wide Web @ http://www.tabasco.com.

Mcllhenny Company, One Click Ahead, PepperFest: A Livin, Breathin Festival on the World Wide Web @ http://www.tabasco.com.

Mcllhenny Company: Mcllhenny Company Launches Tabasco PepperFest Website, M2 Presswire, August 27, 1996.

Mcllhenny Company, Recipes from the Land of Tabasco Pepper Sauce, Avery Island, LA: Mcllhenny Company. Moore, Diane M., The Treasures of Avery Island, Lafayette, LA: Acadian House Publishing, 1990.

Morcos, Ann, Wetlands Pest, Boys Life, January 1996, p. 17.

Naj, Amai, Peppers: A Story of Hot Pursuits, New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.

New on the Web: The Mcllhenny Company, Telecomworldwire, May 20, 1997.

Reynolds, J. R., L.A. House of Blues Is Foundation HQ, Billboard, July 30, 1994, p. 19.

Rice, William, Tabasco Sauce Stands up to a Hurricane, Detroit Free Press, November 18, 1992.

Robichaux, Mark, Tabasco Sauce Maker Remains Hot after 125 Years, Wall Street Journal, May 11, 1990.

Charity Anne Dorgan