When it comes to food, some items are so attached to their place of origin that the name itself is copyrighted. True champagne can only be made in the Champagne region of France; otherwise, it’s just sparkling wine. The same goes for Greek feta cheese. So we can kind of understand why a Californian man got upset over a “Texas” hot sauce.
According to Phillip White, he purchased a bottle of Texas Pete hot sauce because he was taken by the brand’s name and a picture of a red cowboy with a lasso on the label. He later discovered, however, that the sauce was not produced in the Lone Star state at all, but rather in North Carolina.
The story goes that Sam and Ila Jane Garner of North Carolina were trying to help their son keep his restaurant open during the Great Depression. The establishment eventually closed, but the hot sauce they served proved to be a massive success—so much so that the family aimed to make a spicier version in 1929 and wanted to give it an American-sounding name. “Texas Pete” was inspired by their son’s nickname and the cowboy films which were popular at the time.
White was so offended by what he deemed “false marketing” that he filed a class-action lawsuit against Winston-Salem’s T.W. Garner Food Company, claiming that it “cheated its way to a market-leading position in the $3 billion-dollar hot-sauce industry at the expense of law-abiding competitors”. He who “overpaid for the products due to the false and deceptive labeling,” along with an order requiring the manufacturer to change its name, branding, and labels.
T.W. Garner has until November 10 to respond to the complaint.
