Today we’d like to introduce you to Catherine Myers.
Hi Catherine, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I came to this from psychology, not food. When the idea of Boerne Brand was forming, I was a Marriage and Family Therapist, Associate working mostly with teens — but heat had been on my plate since elementary school. The question in our kitchen was never what we put hot sauce on; it was what didn’t we put it on.
The catalyst was breakfast at a popular Texas chain. I poured the table-side hot sauce over my scrambled eggs and three bites in realized all I could taste was the sauce — vinegar up front, a quick flash of heat, then nothing. The eggs underneath had disappeared. The conversation didn’t stop the whole drive home: a hot sauce shouldn’t take over the plate, it should make it better. That’s what was missing, and that’s what we set out to make.
The first batches happened in our kitchen — fresh green jalapeños, our own mash, weeks of variation batches before we sealed a bottle. That became Original Jalapeño. Then came Texas markets, weekend after weekend, sampling on tortilla chips. The same lines kept coming back: “Is that a salsa?” “I can see that on eggs.” We didn’t have one breakout moment. We had the same surprise from a hundred different strangers, and that was enough proof for us to keep going.
The early years were a stack — therapy weekdays, grad school weekends, a market booth somewhere in Texas filling whatever was left. Self-funded, bootstrap, every hat on my head. Family helped set up the booth, sample the sauce, work the day. It takes a village, and we had one.
The breakthrough started at a meat market. The owner walked out during a sausage demo, tasted our sauce, and — unprompted — shared what he’d learned about retail, specifically Kroger. I researched that night. By then we had two sauces in our lineup — Original Jalapeño and Smokin’ Red — and when the acceptance came back, it covered both. All the Texas Krogers.
Now Today, all four of our sauces — Original Jalapeño, Smokin’ Red, Hot Rodeo, and Honey Bonnet — are on the shelf at every major Texas retail banner.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
No — it wasn’t always smooth. The early years were a stack of work. I was a Marriage and Family Therapist Associate during the weekdays, in grad school on weekends, and running a market booth somewhere in Texas in whatever time was left. Self-funded, bootstrap, every dollar that came in went right back out. Behind the scenes I was wearing every hat — CEO, pick-packer, bottle labeler, barcode creator, delivery person, transportation coordinator. Switching hats midday and trying to dodge imposter syndrome at the same time is its own kind of work.
The hardest part wasn’t the workload, though. It was the rejection. I’m competitive by nature and I aimed high early. I went after big B2B accounts and learned the hard way that this industry moves slowly — these deals are year-long, not next-week. I’d also stepped into a world without a map: new acronyms, CPG lingo, an entire vocabulary I had to pick up while I was already running.
There was a stretch where the rejection letters all came back at once — too small, not enough followers, not yet. That was the moment it hit me: this is a big undertaking if I’m trying to do it this way. I’d gotten stars in my eyes about where we were headed and gotten out ahead of where we actually were. This is an uphill battle, and every morning I have to suit up and fight for a brand I believe in. That stretch came close to taking me out.
What turned it was one realization: meet the business where it’s at. Its actual current state, not the version two years out I’d been pitching. Build from there. Lean into the rejection and ask what got better because of it. Stack the small wins. Burnout is easy to miss until it smacks you down — once it did, I learned to pace it. There wasn’t a single heroic save. Just showing up every day and getting a little better at the version of the job in front of me.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Boerne Brand?
Boerne Brand is a Texas-made hot sauce company. We have four sauces — Original Jalapeño, Smokin’ Red, Hot Rodeo, and Honey Bonnet — and you can find all four on the shelf at every major Texas retail banner.
What we specialize in is honest, pepper-forward hot sauce that knows how to act at dinner. Most hot sauces walk onto your plate and try to take over — vinegar up front, sharp heat, and the food underneath disappears. Our whole design brief was the opposite: a hot sauce shouldn’t take over the plate, it should make the plate better. It should taste like real peppers. It should pair with the food you actually cook on a Tuesday night.
What sets us apart is what we don’t compromise on. We use fresh green jalapeños — not dried, not frozen, not concentrate. We make our own mash in-house, which adds a day of work and real cost to every batch, but the moment we hand off the mash, the sauce stops being ours. And we bottle in 8 oz of glass when the industry standard is 5 oz — that’s three more ounces of sauce in your hand, at a fair price. The peppers lead. Everything else exists to support them.
The community piece is what I’m most proud of, brand-wise. Boerne Brand wasn’t built in a boardroom. It was built at Texas markets, weekend after weekend — family setting up the booth, fellow vendors letting us put our sauce on their plates, and customers giving us their honest reactions on a tortilla chip. Every meaningful step we’ve taken since has had a community behind it. We’ve had customers in our corner since long before this was a brand anyone had heard of. They’re the reason this works — and that’s not something we forget.
What I’d want your readers to know is this: we’ve come a long way from those first batches in our kitchen. Today, all four of our sauces sit on shelves at every major Texas retail banner — and every one of them is here because a customer told us what they wanted. Original Jalapeño was the breakfast disappointment we set out to fix. Smokin’ Red came from buyers asking for a red profile next to the green. Hot Rodeo came from heat-seekers wanting more fire. Honey Bonnet came from people who wanted sweet against the burn. We don’t draw up product roadmaps in a boardroom — our customers do, one ask at a time. That’s how we got here, that’s how we keep growing, and it’s why the next sauce will exist too. If there’s a hot sauce you’ve been wishing existed, tell us. We’re listening.
We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
One of my favorite childhood memories is the garage sales we helped organize and run with my mom and the nuns at our local parish. We’d spend weekends sorting donations, pricing items, setting up tables, working the cashbox, helping shoppers find what they were looking for, then breaking it all down at the end of the day. Mom would put us to work and the nuns would put us to work — and somehow it never quite felt like work, because everyone was pitching in for the same thing.
Looking back, I realize we were practicing running a business from way back then. Inventory and pricing without anyone calling it that. Customer service — how to be friendly with strangers, how to answer questions about items we knew nothing about, how to make change. Teamwork across generations, with women who had been organizing parish events for decades. The lesson that a long day on your feet is worth it when the work means something to the people you’re doing it with.
That was the village I grew up in — and the same shape is the one Boerne Brand lives in today. Community isn’t a marketing angle for me. It’s the only way I’ve known how to build anything.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.boernebrand.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/boernebrand/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/boernebrand/
- LinkedIn: Boerne Brand
