Katy mom and her three sons are poised to be H-E-B’s next Texas food superstars
When George, Luke and Ayden Johannson return to school next week, they’ll have a whopper of a story to tell of how they spent their summer vacation.
The three teens and their mother, Traci Johannson, coowners of the fledgling 3 Sons Foods, won H-E-B’s 2019 Primo Picks Quest for Texas Best, an annual competition to find the next great Texas foods to place on shelves of the state’s supermarket giant. The Katy family makes Diablo Verde Sauce, a creamy cilantro and jalapeño dipping and cooking elixir, that was named grand-prize winner at the two-day competition in Houston that concluded Thursday. They went home with a check for $25,000 and a pledge from H-E-B to help build and launch the spicy sauce throughout the company’s vast supermarket chain.
After a rousing, tear-filled awards ceremony, Traci said their lives were back to normal. They returned to Katy that afternoon to pick up the school schedules at Seven Lakes High School for Luke and Ayden. They were all too tired to celebrate in any big way, so they ended up eating some cookies H-E-B had given them and watching an episode of “Stranger Things.”
“I came back, and I still had to do the dishes,” Traci said. “So life is still the same.”
But not really. 3 Sons Foods’ salsalike Diablo Verde Sauce is now poised to be as big a player as it can in the aisles of H-E-B stores. Since the competition began in 2014, H-E-B has reviewed and sourced 3,838 products made by Texas food businesses, most of which are at the mom-and-pop or startup level. Of those, 553 are now on shelves at H-E-B, and 19 of those suppliers have achieved sales of more than $1 million, said Jody Hall, director of global sourcing for H-E-B.
Traci Johannson said her cilantro-sauce story had very humble beginnings. She couldn’t find a good creamy and spicy green sauce to drizzle on her fish tacos, so she made her own recipe. It became a staple in her home, and soon she was making it for friends and neighbors and as gifts to her sons’ teachers. They peddled it at the local farmers market. Traci began getting calls for larger orders, which her boys would help her make in the family kitchen then deliver on their bicycles. They quickly outgrew that, and by July 2017 they had formed a company and found a co-packer to commercially produce the sauce.
Each son has a role in the company: Ayden is in charge of sales and shipping; Luke oversees inventory; and George is head of social media and marketing. The boys are actively involved in the company and even own a share (collectively, 40 percent; Traci owns 60). By October 2018, they were asked to demo the sauce in a neighborhood H-E-B in Katy.
“There are a lot of people who have a pot and a spoon and can make salsa, but this is hard work,” Traci, a single mother, said of creating and promoting a small food business. “You have to get out there and do the demos. The boys all do demos.”
While their friends were out at the water parks during the summer, her sons were working on Diablo Verde Sauce, Traci said.
In July, H-E-B announced the 20 Texas finalists for the Quest competition, and 3 Sons was suddenly poised for stardom. The company has pledged a portion of sales from each jar of sauce to the International Rhino Foundation (rhinos.org, an organization dedicated to stopping the illegal poaching of rhinos), a cause that the boys, especially Luke, believe in. Their company motto is “Eat Diablo, Save Rhinos.”
Traci said she has no idea how big Diablo Verde Sauce will get. But she’s proud that she has helped build something her sons
can legitimately call their own, and a company that can help support her family.
“I took a deep breath and jumped off a cliff,” she said. “This will provide a living for us. We’re ready to grow.”
Ayden, like his brothers, said he was nervous at the competition. “It was very nerve-racking,” he said. “But it was awesome.”
“I’m relieved it’s over,” George said. “The past few weeks have been really stressful.”
But his summer vacation story when he enters Beckendorff Junior High School next week won’t be a typical one: “I can’t wait to tell my friends that my sauce will be in every H-E-B.”