imagine an ice cream, a sweet dessert, chocolate, or fruit of the mediterranean with the flavour of chili sauce? That is the proposal’s most innovative group McIlhenny in Spain. A risky strategy that aims to win more followers for the iconic sauce of Tabasco, created 150 years ago and who has devoted to the family that owned the brand as the ambassador of the spicy in all the world.
The executive vice president of the group, Harold Osborn, a fifth-generation of this legendary family-owned business that employs 200 workers, complains that in Spain, the sauce is used only in certain dishes and with a few drops.” Which is not the case in other countries of the world, from the first consumer, the united States, followed by Japan; to the european continent, Asia, Australia and more recently Dubai, scenarios in which the formulary for this product is a lot more diverse.
In Spain, with a market share of spicy sauces of 35%, the group aims to grow by evangelizing the market to hit new recipes in which to apply the 720 drops that make up the iconic bottle labeled in 25 languages. “We work for a change of mindset of the consumer, but it is not easy to educate people. We want to teach how to use the Tabasco in Spain. A challenge that seeks new flavors, in addition to enhancing the interesting mediterranean cuisine”.
The conquest of the palate thus becomes the goal of this company, which had a turnover of $ 200 million in 2014, according to the newspaper anglo-saxon Daily Mail, a figure that neither confirms nor denies the family. In fact the vice-president, at the helm of the company, only shows the growth of a digit in the Spanish market and world for this exercise, as well as a volume of export of 50% of their production: “we produce over 700,000 bottles of 60 milliliters a day, the same amount that my great-great grandfather, Edmund McIlhenny, creator in 1868 of red pepper, produced in a whole year”. Figures that allow them to control 25% of the market from the spicy to the international level.
Invoice 200 million and remains a family-owned company of 200 workers
And do it from the same plantations for a century and a half, of Avery Island, Louisiana (USA), a privileged place of the country by its special conditions of moisture. From there, it centralizes the production of the red chilli. This reports the larger part of the income to the inventors of the tabasco, but it also represents the Achilles heel of the company. The issues associated to global climate change, as well as hurricanes Katrina, Rita, or Matthew, led to the transfer of its production to Canada, Venezuela and the United Kingdom. “Today the whole production is again in Avery Island, but it is very difficult to fight against nature, so that we do not rule out re-produce in Latin america,” says Harold Osborn, who also is an engineer in Environmental Sciences.
shifting Cultivation
Aware that the Polobet nature does not play to his favor, and that “will come to other hurricanes” have become a custom in family law. Each year, in order to safeguard your most valuable asset of an environmental catastrophe that will dedicated to a difficult position, one of the members of the saga personally selects the best plants and their seeds, and deposits them in the chamber of a bench of Avery Island, where they wait to be planted in the next harvest.
All measurements are few to preserve the precious red chile, and the business that it generates, the success of which resides, according to the group’s executive McIlhenny, in “maintaining the legendary style of development”, extending controls of quality in all of the handmade process, from the selection of seeds, the cultivation, the mixture of the ground chile with the salt, maceration in oak barrels (formerly of Jack Daniels) for three years and only after a number not confessed of vinegar, administered by a member of the family. “And all from a healthy solution that contains no chemicals, no preservatives, no spices and low in salt”.
Manufactures of 700,000 bottles per day, the same amount produced in a year in 1868
And in the second place “the management in the relationships of family and work”. Today there are four families, the descendants (up to sixth generation), that work together without straying away from the discipline imposed by knowing the business “from below”. The own Osborn, after working for the U.S. Government and becoming a director of an oil company, began arremangándose and digging trenches. “The management of people and their happiness is essential to generate the best product, and that includes being one more —ensures— especially in a business absolutely handcrafted, and giving work to entire generations of the region. It is a responsibility for all to maintain the family name in a label during a century and a half”.
After these days in Dubai, New York, London, and visiting Australia and China, anticipates that already are being tested to develop different products and launch to the market two sauces new that complete the range of the six that currently exist in the market: a peruvian and other smoked balsamic vinegar. In addition, McIlhennys Company aims to enhance e-commerce and its presence in large surfaces to meet both the demand in stores and online, even guests. All with the goal of expanding a base of clients that are already contained, in addition to hotels, restaurants and cafes, the aviation, the u.s. army, canadian or several space stations. Or a cupboard without his bottle, to position the gem of the business that was born as bottles of perfume for enchilar to the world.
