TRICENTENNIAL
Creator started salsa in 1947; it was produced in S.A. into ’90s
Pace picante sauce got its start here after World War II.
Just after World War II, a San Antonian named David Pace created a recipe for salsa, completely unaware that his concoction would become one of the most popular snack items in the nation.
Salsa had surpassed ketchup as the country’s favorite condiment when Pace picante sauce was sold in the 1990s to the Campbell Soup Co. of Camden, N.J. But the salsa long advertised as being made in San Antonio — “where people know what salsa should taste like” — no longer is produced in the Alamo City.
Born and reared in Monroe, La., Pace studied to be a dentist when he attended Tulane University in New Orleans, where he also was a tackle on the football team and played in the first Sugar Bowl.
He later was a football coach, then served in the military during the war, training as a pilot at Kelly Field and working as an Army test pilot in India. After the war, he returned to San Antonio and continued the family trade of producing maple syrup and jellies.
According to the Pace Foods website, Pace, hoping to create a salsa recipe, experimented with jalapeños, onions and garlic sauteed in oil, but he felt the oil ruined the taste.
So he substituted tomatoes for the oil, and in 1947 began marketing his “picante Spanish hot sauce.”
About 30 years later, he sold the company and divorced his first wife, the former Margaret Boss- hardt, who had helped get the company started. The company moved to a plant on Interstate 35 in 1984. Motorists could smell the aroma of peppers and other ingredients wafting across the interstate.
During the Gulf War, when U.S. soldiers in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait craved the product, Pace sent a pallet of 2,000 16-ounce jars of the mild version of the sauce.
Pace officials speculated that it might help troops cope with the hot desert conditions.
“Nobody knows for sure, but a lot of people think chili peppers cool the body by making it perspire more,” Pace President R.J. Sands told the San Antonio Light in late 1990.
In 1991, the $640 million in sales of Pace and other salsas surpassed that of ketchup, which trailed at $600 million after being the nation’s leading condiment for decades.
For years, Pace and its major rival brand, Old El Paso, had legal battles over marketing and packaging. When David Pace died at 79 of heart failure in 1993, his invention claimed a 27 percent share of the salsa market, with Old El Paso at 21 percent.
For years, the company was heavily involved in local community initiatives such as arts programs and mentoring at-risk students.
Kit Goldsbury, David Pace’s former son-in-law, had bought out the Pace family’s interest in the business and was its CEO in November 1994.
That’s when Campbell, a company dating to 1869, announced that it would buy the Pace picante brand for $1.1 billion.
Closure of the sale in 1995 gave Pace access to the soup company’s marketing power and helped get the salsa to more stores on the East Coast.
Pace reported $250 million in sales in 1996, up from $13 million in 1982.
In 1998, Campbell announced that it would move production of the salsa to Paris, in East Texas, where it already was producing Prego spaghetti sauce and other products.
Pace picante sauce still is sold today.