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Texas Pete Redefines Hot Sauce Culture With We Have The Sauce
Texas Pete's "We Have The Sauce" is a three-spot film campaign created by agency Creative Energy and published in the United States in April 2023, extending the brand's "Creativeenergy Agency.clapboard.com/archive/texas-pete-the-tale-of-texas-pete-let-flavor-run-wild-food-drink">Sauce Like You Mean It" platform by repositioning hot sauce as a symbol of spirit, swagger, and communal gathering rather than a purely culinary product.
The campaign builds directly on a strategic foundation that Creative Energy first established when it launched the "Sauce Like You Mean It" platform in May 2019 as a print campaign in the United States, according to Clapboard. Where that original work introduced the tagline and its assertive tone, "We Have The Sauce" deepens the brand's philosophical claim — redefining "having the sauce" as a cultural identity marker. The phrase, already embedded in everyday American vernacular as shorthand for charisma and confidence, becomes the campaign's organising principle. Texas Pete is not simply a condiment; it is the embodiment of a particular kind of person who gathers their people, shares generously, and brings energy to every occasion, according to Syndicatemarketresearch.
Three distinct film spots carry this idea into execution, each directed by Natalie Faye and produced for the United States market, according to Sphericalinsights. The spots present Texas Pete not as an ingredient to be listed but as a presence to be felt — a throughline connecting food, personality, and community. Marketing Director Katie Chaffin served as the client lead for the campaign, overseeing a production that involved Creative Energy's full creative team alongside production company Dace and Mohr. The result is a campaign that asks consumers to see themselves in the brand, and to see the brand as an expression of how they live. Clapboard rates "We Have The Sauce" at 63 out of 100, reflecting a campaign with genuine strategic clarity and a coherent creative identity operating within a mid-tier execution range.
Texas Pete occupies a distinctive position in the United States hot sauce market. The brand is owned by Garner Foods, a family-owned company that created Texas Pete in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1929, according to Clapboard. That heritage gives the brand a regional authenticity that larger competitors cannot replicate — but authenticity alone does not drive growth in a category that has become increasingly competitive and crowded.
The global hot sauce market was estimated at approximately 3.09 billion dollars in 2023 with a compound annual growth rate of 7.42 percent through 2030, according to Fortune Business Insights as reported by GlobeNewswire. North America is identified as the leading regional market within that global figure. In the United States specifically, the category has attracted significant investment from both legacy brands and newer entrants, with competitors including Tabasco, produced by McIlhenny Company, and Cholula, now owned by McCormick and Company, each commanding strong shelf presence and brand recognition across the US market.
Creative Energy's strategic insight for "We Have The Sauce" centres on the social and cultural role that food plays in American life. Rather than competing on heat level or flavour profile — the default battleground for most hot sauce advertising in the United States — the campaign positions Texas Pete as a conduit for human connection. The "sauce" becomes a metaphor for personality, presence, and the kind of hospitality that brings people together around a table. This approach draws on a well-documented consumer truth: in the United States, shared meals function as primary rituals of belonging and self-expression. By anchoring Texas Pete to that truth, Creative Energy moves the brand out of a purely product-led conversation and into the lifestyle and identity space, a territory where emotional loyalty is built and competitors find it harder to follow.
Director Natalie Faye shapes the visual and tonal identity of "We Have The Sauce" across all three film spots. Her direction makes a consistent choice: to treat the people on screen as the primary subject, with Texas Pete's hot sauce appearing as a natural extension of their energy rather than the focal point of a product demonstration. The result is film work that feels closer to a character study than a conventional food advertisement.
The creative team at Creative Energy brought significant collaborative depth to the production. Hannah Howard served as Creative Director, with Bailey Eshbach as Art Director and Taylor Waisanka as Copywriter, as documented by Creative Energy. Trinity Lancaster represented the brand executive side, while Katie Chaffin held overall marketing leadership as the client's Marketing Director. Production was handled by Dace and Mohr, with the full unit operating in the United States to ensure the campaign's cultural references and visual language felt native to its audience.
One of the three spots, titled "Backup Bottle," illustrates the campaign's tonal approach with particular clarity. Its descriptor — "Do good for your taste buds and your people. Sauce Like You Mean It" — captures the dual register the entire campaign operates in: the literal and the communal, the flavour and the feeling. The "Backup Bottle" spot recorded views and engagement consistent with organic distribution on the platform where it was submitted, per Clapboard. Across all three spots, the production maintains a warmth and informality that reinforces the campaign's core argument: that Texas Pete belongs at real gatherings, with real people, in real moments of American social life. The Food and Drink category in United States advertising frequently defaults to aspirational staging and controlled environments; Faye's direction consciously resists that convention, grounding the work in something less polished and more recognisably lived-in.
Verified campaign-level performance data for "We Have The Sauce" is not comprehensively available in public sources. What is documented, per Clapboard, is that the campaign was submitted approximately two years after its April 2023 publication in the United States, and that individual spot-level engagement metrics exist for at least one of the three films. The "Backup Bottle" spot recorded in the region of two thousand views and seven likes at the point of documentation, per Clapboard, figures that reflect limited organic reach on a single platform rather than the full picture of a paid media campaign.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates several qualities associated with effective brand-building work in the United States Food and Drink category. The decision to extend a proven platform — "Sauce Like You Mean It" — rather than introduce a new creative direction reduces the strategic risk and compounds brand equity built since 2019. The three-spot format provides enough variation to reach different audience segments while maintaining a unified tonal signature. And the lifestyle framing, moving Texas Pete beyond product attributes and into cultural identity, positions the brand for the kind of long-term affinity that category leaders in the United States hot sauce market have historically built through consistent creative investment.
Creative Energy's prior work for Texas Pete provides useful context for evaluating the ambition of this campaign. The "Drama for Your Mouth" campaign generated more than 18 million impressions over three months, according to Creative Energy, and the "Texas Pete Cologne" work won Gold and Judge's Choice recognition at the American Advertising Awards, according to Reddit. "We Have The Sauce" carries forward that agency-client relationship into new creative territory, with a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflecting solid strategic coherence and competent execution within the mid-range of the Food and Drink category.
"We Have The Sauce" is a 2023 film campaign for Texas Pete created by Creative Energy in the United States. It extends the Sauce Like You Mean It platform by reframing hot sauce as a symbol of spirit, swagger, and communal gathering. Director Natalie Faye brought three distinct spots to life for the US market.
Natalie Faye directed all three film spots in the We Have The Sauce campaign. She worked alongside Creative Energy's team, which included Creative Director Hannah Howard, Art Director Bailey Eshbach, and Copywriter Taylor Waisanka, with production handled by Dace and Mohr in the United States.
We Have The Sauce directly continues the Sauce Like You Mean It campaign, which Creative Energy first launched for Texas Pete in May 2019 as a print campaign in the United States. The 2023 work expands the platform's meaning, repositioning sauce as a broader attitude and cultural identity rather than a product feature.
Creative Energy created We Have The Sauce for Texas Pete. The Charlotte-based agency has worked with Texas Pete across multiple campaigns, including the original Sauce Like You Mean It platform and earlier work such as Texas Pete Cologne, which won Gold at the American Advertising Awards, according to Creative Energy.
Clapboard rates We Have The Sauce at 63 out of 100. The score reflects a campaign with clear strategic direction and coherent creative identity, extending a proven brand platform through three film spots directed by Natalie Faye for the United States Food and Drink market in 2023.
Katie Chaffin is the Marketing Director at Texas Pete and served as the client lead on We Have The Sauce. She oversaw the 2023 United States campaign produced by Creative Energy, working alongside brand executive Trinity Lancaster and the full Creative Energy team to bring the Sauce Like You Mean It platform into new creative territory.
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