A TAYLOR-MADE SUCCESS STORY

Salsa is the spice of life for the Ancira family.

Since the 1990s, three generations of Anciras have been selling their salsas in Taylor and other towns around Williamson County. Today, what began as a fun family sideline has expanded to become a nationwide business.

This spring, Ancira Salsa went on the shelves of all of H-E-B’s Central Markets, as well as Walmart.com and other national chains.

The salsa saga started in the ’90s with Jesse Ancira Sr. and his wife, Josie. Both worked for IBM, but they also loved to cook. Family and friends raved about their homemade salsa for years. And when they retired, they started making more of it.

“My grandma is phenomenal,” said Jesse “Trey” Ancira III, 33, the chief marketing officer for Ancira Salsas.

“Tortillas, tacos, carne guisada … on weekends she and my grandpa would cook Mexican recipes, and she would always have her salsa on the table,” he said. “When they started winning salsa contests, they started making it in a commercial kitchen and selling it at local farmers markets and festivals.”

He added, “I remember in the early 2000s, cutting out labels with my younger sister, Alex, and helping put them on the jars by hand, crooked or diagonal.”

Ancira Salsa became a popular local product, but now it’s a national success story.

“Three years ago, we were sold in three local stores — Moss True Value Hardware and the Texas Beer Co. in Taylor, and the Sugar Shack in Bastrop,” Ancira said.

“The next year we were in 90 stores across the country. This year, we are in all of H-E-B’s Central Markets, on Walmart. com — just counting national food distributors, we have a 500-door count (the number of places you can buy the salsa), not counting all the mom-and-pop businesses. Our tagline is ‘Nearly World Famous,’” he added.

The company’s website at ancirasalsa. com, Instagram, Facebook and other digital platforms feature the family’s five signature salsas — green, mild, hot, habanero and Six Pack Hot Sauce, along with Ancira Salsa T-shirts, polos, snapback caps and koozies.

Ancira’s father, Jesse Ancira Jr., had the vision to make Ancira Salsa a serious business.

It wasn’t because he had time on his hands. At 59, he is the founding partner of Ancira Strategic Partners, a high-powered lobbying firm that represents Fortune 500 companies and other major clients before the state Legislature.

He has been a special agent with the FBI, worked in numerous positions in the State Comptroller’s Office, and was chief of staff for former Texas Speaker of the House Joe Straus III, a Republican from San Antonio. He has also served as the mayor of Taylor and the president of the Taylor Independent School District board. He still remains involved with the community in various ways, including serving as a liaison between Samsung Austin Semiconductor and the city of Taylor, as the South Korea-based company builds its massive, multibillion-dollar microchip plant.

Despite Ancira Salsa’s “Nearly World Famous” tagline, he said he hasn’t explored the market in South Korea — yet. But he does have an idea for a new motto for Taylor.

“I joke around that our (slogan) could be, ‘Taylor, Home of Chips and Salsa,’” Ancira said.

Ancira added a colleague at the comptroller’s office sparked his decision to get serious about the condiment business.

“I would take my parents’ salsa to work, and one day a lady told me, ‘You should market this commercially, or one day you’ll regret it.’ I took that to heart,” he said. “I formed an LLC, and we finally got going in 2018. I did it piecemeal, a lot of late nights. At first we sold it out of the back of the truck.

“I learned a lot of things — nutrition labels, inventory fulfillment, trademarks. To sell commercially, we have to follow (Food and Drug Administration) guidelines, so I found a co-packing company in Buda. And it has really taken off. And my parents, my wife, my daughter Alexis, my sister and brother-in-law and my son Trey — we’re all involved.”

These days, Trey Ancira takes the lead in the business.

A former legislative liaison, he consulted on policy analysis and marketing strategies for the hemp/cannabis and consumer packaged-goods industries in California. In 2020 he founded Fecundity Consulting. The next year he was honored as one of the “Top 100 Marketing & Advertising Influencers” at the annual Marketing, Advertising and Retail Summit in Las Vegas.

Today, back home in Taylor, he is focused on the family business.

“The branding Trey has done and the presence on social media has taken us a long way,” his father said.

Jesse Ancira Jr. added, “Trey is the mastermind with the internet. And he works with brokers and distributors with my brother-in-law. One year when he was home for the holidays from California, I was loading up salsa in my truck to deliver, and he came up and asked me for a jar of each kind. He came back a few minutes later while I was still loading the truck. He said, ‘I just sold six cases. I took pictures and put them on social media and my friends bought them.’” The dad continued, “Right there, I said, we need to transition from selling encyclopedia-style, door to door, to the internet. And we did. And in 2022, we doubled our sales from 2021. This year we expect to double again.”

That’s probably an understatement. Jesse Jr.’s brother-in-law John Walton, manager of the company’s fulfillment center, said he tries to keep about 15 pallets of salsa on hand at all times.

“At 225 cases per pallet, and six jars per case, that’s a lot of salsa — but now with Central Market, Albertsons, Safeway, Foodland, PriceRite … we’re selling it,” he said.

“And that’s not even counting the mom-and-pop places like Mo’s Lounge and Moss True Value and Big B’s Meat Market (& Grocery) in Granger, and Thorndale Meat Market, Treat Yourself Boutique in Rockdale, Westphalia Market in Hutto. In the ’90s, Jesse and Josie would probably sell 35 to 40 cases in a weekend,” Walton said.

He added, “Jesse and Trey are super, super go-getters. Trey is a super bright shining star. But he still loves the mom-and-pop places — he says his mom and pop, and their mom and pop started all this. He will still take his tent and products to pop-ups and events all around a 100-mile radius from here to showcase Ancira Salsa, he’s so proud of it.“ Recently, Trey Ancira worked with his lifelong friend Ben Jinkins, owner of Austin’s Neato Creative, to create a promotional video featuring Josie and Jesse Sr. in their kitchen, talking salsa.

It won a national Telly Award. “People love origin stories,” Jinkins said. “That’s the coolest thing — the story of the family tradition. I’ve known Trey since I was 4 or 5. I went to day care with him and then we hung together all the way up to middle school, when my family moved. Trey is amazing. And his grandparents are hilarious. They have such great memories, they can tell really detailed stories.”

Emily Smith, owner of Taylor’s Black Dog Services, built the Ancira Salsa web site. Smith has known the Ancira family her entire life, she said.

“Our salsa is in eight to 10 states, in 500 stores across the country. That is significant,” Trey Ancira said. “My goal now isn’t so much the sales or revenue, it’s building brand equity. Now we have people from all over the U.S. and even abroad supporting us, and they know this is dedicated to our grandparents and their legacy here.”