Texas Pete trademark was born 70 years ago ... in North Carolina. How it got its name

Texas Pete hot sauce was trademarked 70 years ago ... in North Carolina.

So, how did a sauce with roots in Winston-Salem come to bear the name of the Lone Star State? Here’s what historians say about the brand’s origins, including the milestone it reached June 9, 1953.

On that date, Texas Pete was registered as a trademark to the T.W. Garner Food Company, helping to cement its spot in cupboards across the nation. But the recipe got its humble start years earlier, during the Great Depression, according to the brand and the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

Texas Pete’s origins date back almost a century to 1929, when 16-year-old Thad Garner used money that was meant for college to buy a restaurant.

“Along with the restaurant came a special secret recipe for a delicious, so everybody told them, barbecue sauce,” Texas Pete wrote on its website. “The restaurant did not survive, but the barbecue sauce, made in the family kitchen, survived and prospered.”

Garner’s dad, Sam, reportedly “traveled the back roads of North Carolina” to sell the sauce, which helped the family make ends meet.

“There were people who said they should make this product hotter, and more spicy,” Ann Riddle, president and CEO of Garner Foods, told Our State magazine in 2017. “And the family said, ‘Well, instead of doing that, why don’t we just make another product?’”

Texas Pete — “made from hot red peppers, vinegar and salt” — got its commercial start in 1936, state officials wrote.

Origins of the name

But, as the brand phrased it, “How is it that a tasty red pepper sauce made in North Carolina happens to be named ‘Texas Pete’ anyway?” It’s believed to have come as Sam Garner joined his sons Thad, Harold and Ralph in trying to create an “American name” for their product.

“The Texas Pete name was chosen to evoke the spicy Mexican inspired foods of Texas,” experts said. “‘Pete’ comes from Harold’s nickname.”

In the 1930s, cowboys were popular on-screen characters, and the brand became a symbol of “self-reliance,” historians said. But recently, the cowboy-inspired logo has sparked controversy.

In September, a class-action lawsuit accused Garner Foods of deception. The customer who filed the suit said Texas Pete’s original hot sauce bottles feature a lasso-holding character and a “‘lone’ star’” symbol, leading him to think the product was made in Texas.

“We are currently investigating these assertions with our legal counsel to find the clearest and most effective way to respond,” the company wrote Oct. 10 in a statement to McClatchy News.

In addition to creating the name, Sam and his three sons — known collectively as the “four Garners” — opened a factory on the site of their family’s Winston-Salem home, where it still stands today. Over the years, the brand expanded to more sauce flavors and was even included in World War II rations, officials said.

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