McIlhenny's Gold

August 13, 2007
This portrait of the eccentric family that brought the world Tabasco sauce isn't exactly hot, but it's certainly flavorful. Rothfeder digs deep into “one of the most profitable and oldest family businesses in U.S. history”—McIlhenny Co., founded in 1869 on a salt-mine island off Louisiana—and has fun sorting family legend from fact. The early years—including setting up a plantation with workers' housing that remained in operation until only a few years ago—were the company's most eventful. After winning a dubious legal battle to trademark “Tabasco,” McIlhenny Co. settled in as a sluggish one-product manufacturer relying on word of mouth. So it's a good thing for readers that the McIlhennys have left such colorful and controversial legacies as collectors, conservationists, citizens and especially CEOs. Granted, with its unique circumstances and “relatively simple, one-dimensional Tabasco business model,” McIlhenny Co. is of little use as a corporate case study, except perhaps as an example of how family ownership can destabilize even a sure thing. Despite the company's “ebbing sales and profits” even in the midst of a hot-sauce craze, Rothfeder's tale is balanced and always entertaining, and may please at least some of those who shake a few drops of Tabasco on whatever they're eating.