Makers of jams, sauces bloom in the Hill Country
Fischer & Wieser a big player in specialty eats for upscale markets
FREDERICKSBURG — It’s a production day at the former lumber mill on a side street of this Texas tourist town, and the air is sweet with pomegranate, mango and chipotle. Inside, bottles rattle along a conveyor belt, twisting their way through filling, cooling, capping and sealing.
In a nearby staging area, boxes are ready for shipping to a privatelabel customer, one of the several that make up about 30 percent of the customer base of the Fischer & Wieser specialty food brands.
Known to many Central Texans as the name gracing the exotic jams, sauces and salsas sold at Das Peach Haus on the outskirts of town, Fischer & Wieser is a significant player in the multibilliondollar specialty food industry.
Its array of more than 200 products — agave-sweetened blackberry-lemon fruit spread, anyone? — is sold under its own and other labels in upscale markets by major chains such as Kroger, Safeway and H-E-B. A smaller production area serves momand-pop shops across the nation and direct customer orders via the website jelly.com.
In addition to the Fischer & Wieser brand, the company also produces Mom’s pasta sauces, Dr. Foo’s Kitchen line of Thai sauces and Food Trk Fusion Sauces, a brand sold in partnership with HE-B.
Fischer & Wieser, which employs 83 workers, doesn’t release its sales or revenue numbers.
Co-owner Mark Wieser has another local claim to fame. His father, Joseph, a German immigrant, was one of the driving forces behind Fredericksburg’s famed peach business.
After World War I, demand for cotton — the crop most Fredericksburg farmers grew — collapsed. No one worked with bank
ers; they bought on credit from the merchants and paid up after the harvest.
Since that wasn’t happening, the merchants called a mass meeting and charged the farmers with finding a solution. The elder Wieser suggested fruit trees. By 1935, Fredericksburg had an abundant supply of peaches.
Wieser, the youngest of five children, spent summer days picking and selling the fruit.
“I remember one day I made $85,” Wieser said. He peddled fruit under the shade of a stand he’d fashioned out of the old fence posts his father had lying around. “That was about $850 in today’s buying power. I said, ‘Gee, I want to do this for a living.’”
In 1969, after landing a teaching job in Fredericksburg, he started Das Peach Haus. He hired high school students to work for him and in 1979 brought on Case Fischer, who’d been a student in his tennis class, to thrash agaritas. Fischer turned out to be a naturalborn salesman.
The two became close. By the time Fischer reached his senior year, he knew he wanted to keep working for Wieser. Wieser said OK — but not until he graduated from college. Wieser now considers Fischer a surrogate son as well as a business partner. He has named him his heir.
At the time, they thought their niche was the gift business — selling high-end jams and jellies for use as stocking stuffers or Mother’s Day presents. But merchants wanted to buy wholesale to stock their store shelves.
Early in the 1990s, they got a showroom in the Dallas Market Center and started going to fancy food shows in New York and San Francisco.
A turning point came when they realized people were using their products as cooking sauces. Onion jelly on pork tenderloin. Peach preserves for barbecue.
The aha! moment came with Fischer’s 1996 marriage of raspberries and chipotle. They’d been working with raspberries, and a friend recommended the pepper. Fischer was dubious. But after he sent samples to fellow foodies, the phone rang off the hook.
“They all called and said, ‘This is the flavor. You’ve got to use chipotle because the others, this blows them out of the water,’” Fischer said. “And it really had that smoky, that salty, that acidic, that sweet flavor that hits all the senses on your palate.”
The Original Roasted Raspberry Chipotle Sauce remains a top seller.
Ashley Seelig, director of quality assurance and product development at Fischer & Wieser, has filled a wall with samples she has developed over the years, such as Instant Pot coq a vin starter, butternut squash pasta sauce and beef broccoli starter.
Seelig, who earned a degree in food science and technology at Texas A&M, makes it a point to keep up with trends and predict future ones. Thai flavors and Korean barbecue are all the rage now, and customers love the “Go Texan” label.
“People are wanting to try different cuisines without having to travel to the destination, so we’re bringing it to their house,” she said. “Clean ingredients, knowing where the ingredients come from, where their product comes from — so local.”
Product development never stops. The goal is to come up with 10 new ones a week, about 1 in 10 of which may make it to market. They always reserve some for the small guys.
“It’s the mom-and-pops who brought us to the dance,” Fischer said. “And so we’ve always had products that are exclusive to them.”