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Mrs. Renfro’s Salsas Do More than Top Tacos

By Lorrie Baumann

Renfro Foods started out in 1940 in a garage from which George Renfro and “Mrs. George” — she always disliked the name she was given at birth — distributed foods to local customers. Since then, the company, still a family-owned and operated business headquarted in Fort Worth, Texas, has moved out of the garage and is now mostly known for its Mrs. Renfro’s salsas, a range of salsas that often feature fusion flavors and occasionally daring twists that defy mass market ideas about what a salsa’s supposed to be. “We think of ourselves as gourmet flavors and fusion flavors without a gourmet price tag,” says Doug Renfro.

He’s George and Mrs. George’s grandson, and he’s now President of the company, a job he says comes with the occasional free latte but few other frills. “My cousins are Vice Presidents, and we pay our dads to stay home now after their half-century of work,” he says.

One of Mrs. Renfro’s spicier offerings is Carolina Reaper Salsa, the company’s entry into the testosterone-fueled romance with ever-hotter peppers. The Carolina Reaper was certified as the world’s hottest pepper in 2013 by the “Guinness Book of World Records,” and while hotter peppers have been developed since then, they’re said to be hot enough to close the airways and burn the throat of anyone who eats one. Mrs. Renfro’s Carolina Reaper sauce is a limited-time offering that’s plenty hot enough to capture the interest of pepperheads, but it also offers flavor along with the heat. “That one has a lot of name recognition,” Renfro says. “It’s been a fun item…. There are people who just want it hotter and hotter, and we are happy to oblige.”

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Mrs. Renfro’s Craft Beer Salsa started out as another one of those limited-time-only salsas like the Carolina Reaper Salsa, but it proved to be so popular that it got itself promoted into the regular range of 32 SKUs of Mrs. Renfro’s products. “Where we succeed is coming in with off-the-wall flavors or things that are ahead of their time — but at a price point where you can put it on your everyday shopping list,” Renfro says.

While the salsas account for about 80 percent of Mrs. Renfro’s sales volume, the company also makes some cheese sauces, including its Chipotle Nacho Cheese Dip and Ghost Pepper Nacho Cheese Dip, a few barbecue sauces, including a Ghost Pepper Barbecue Sauce, and some of the traditional Southern relishes that were the company’s specialty before Pace Foods taught pale-complexioned people from New York City what salsa is supposed to taste like.

Mrs. Renfro’s continues to expand traditional notions about what salsa’s supposed to taste like with culinary ideas that are often — well, we just hate to use the word “stolen” — from the fine gourmet restaurants where Doug Renfro seeks his inspiration, so let’s just say that when he tastes something he likes, he takes notes. Then he gives some thought to whether those ideas are really ahead of their time. When he thinks that the market has caught up to them, that might be when Mrs. Renfro’s launches a new product onto grocery store shelves. “I saw mango habañero relish on a halibut a good five years before we came out with our salsa because it would have been too early,” Renfro says. “In order to make a good sauce, we make a bad sauce in the kitchen, and you keep the winners, and then you repeat…. You want to make things that people will sustain over time.”