Meet Mexico’s First Chili-onaire

Tajín founder Horacio Fernández turned his authentic Mexican seasoning into a $1.5 billion spice giant—by selling to Americans.

_{By Chloe Sorvino, Forbes Staff}

Surrounded by the mountains of Jalisco, Mexico, the entrance to the 20-acre manufacturing headquarters of chili spice maker Industrias Tajín features a half-mile-long driveway lined with Montezuma Bald Cypress trees. Halfway there, it wraps around a massive molcajete, a mortar and pestle weighing 70,000 pounds made from a single piece of volcanic rock. Three giant flags, 26 feet long by 13 feet tall, fly over the glass headquarters. One has the Tajín logo with its signature chili pepper substituting for the i. In the center is the Mexican flag. And to the left is the Stars and Stripes.

To see such a huge symbol of America a thousand miles south of Houston is somewhat disorienting. Unless you know the backstory.

“The American Dream motivated me,” explains Horacio Fernández, the 66-year-old founder and CEO of Tajín. “You build the business with your work, with your mind, with your innovation. In Mexico, it’s difficult.”

Fernández created the seasoning blend 40 years ago in his kitchen, taking cues from what his grandmother used, with the goal of selling genuine Mexican flavors in the U.S. market. It was an audacious plan in an era when some American supermarkets didn’t even stock jalapeños—and Chi-Chi’s, founded in Minneapolis, was among the country’s most popular “Mexican” restaurants. He succeeded by creating a Mexican product aimed squarely at Americans while simultaneously helping preserve (through commercialization) a heritage pepper key to Mexico’s national identity: chile de árbol de Jalisco, featured in Tajín’s logo. Some 40 million pounds of Tajín is now sold in America annually, much of it at Walmart, according to the cowboy hat– wearing Fernández, who rarely gives interviews. The U.S. is the engine behind the brand’s cultlike following, making up 60% of its business.

Forbes pegs annual revenue for Industrias Tajín at $300 million—with gross margins of as high as 70% and net margins of 30%. We estimate the business to be worth $1.5 billion. Fernández, who started the company in 1985, and his brother Aldo, who joined 11 years later, own nearly all of it. Sergio Arias, a banker who became CFO in 1996, has 3%. Since 2020, Tajín has grown sales at a compound rate of 15%, some three times faster than the overall $7 billion U.S. spices category.

Fernández says Tajín, which has been licensed by brands ranging from Taco Bell to Hellman’s mayonnaise, has been wooed by Nestlé, ConAgra, Unilever and Kraft. Yet he hasn’t been tempted to sell. “It’s not about the money,” says Fernández, who has spent some of his wealth on a school cele­brating traditional Mexican ceramics as well as a colonial-era hacienda, built in Jalisco in 1564, purchased in 2021 for events.

Tajín is “category-defining, like Kleenex,” says Matt Leeds, who founded Forward Consumer Partners after having led the deal for McCormick to buy Cholula hot sauce in 2020 at private- equity shop L Catterton. Leeds says Tajín checks all the boxes—“addictive and craveable” while being “very versatile.”

“The brand is underexposed,” he adds. “There are not many companies this scaled, this profi­table, with strong brands, their own manufactu­ring and independently held.”

When McCormick—the $6 billion (sales) seasoning behemoth behind Frank’s Red Hot and Old Bay—acquired Cholula, it spent 10 times revenue for a total of $800 million. Since then, deals in spice brands have ranged a bit lower—from four to eight times sales. Last year, Siete Family Foods, the corn-free chip maker that expanded into seasonings and hot sauce, was acquired by PepsiCo for $1.2 billion, or more than four times sales.

“As a brand, what [Tajín is] doing is meaningful. It’s powerful,” says Siete’s cofounder and CEO, Miguel Garza, who grew up in Laredo, Texas. “It felt for so long like this is a Latino thing. But now I go to my Whole Foods in Austin and they have Tajín—and it’s sitting right next to the fruit.”

Tajín grew through grit. Fernández was raised in Guadalajara, one of seven kids of a wealthy gasoline entrepreneur, but he wanted to strike out on his own. Without help from his father, he started more than 20 small businesses, hawking everything from leather goods to candy. Each one failed, but Fernández kept looking for the idea that would take off. While selling beans and rice, he attended a food trade show in Chicago. There, in 1980, he had an epiphany: He would bring chilis to the masses.

It took a whole year for Tajín to sell its first 200 cases. Fernández dreamed of breaking into America from the beginning, but he spent the first eight years growing sales in Mexico—at a snail’s pace. By 1993, when Tajín finally made it to U.S. grocery stores and supermarkets, its annual revenue was less than $10,000.

Even though sales were tiny, Fernández didn’t have any debt—not even a company credit card. He funded the business entirely from profits. In 2002, emboldened by his American dream, Fernández moved to Houston with his wife and five children. It was a huge risk. Sales were just $130,000 the year prior.

He personally drove cases of Tajín around Texas in his pickup truck, offering tastes to Hispanic grocers and convenience stores. Fiesta, a Houston-based supermarket with 48 stores, was an early adopter, as was Texas favorite H-E-B. Then in 2004 he landed Walmart. Sales doubled every two years, but it wasn’t enough. As retailers like Trader Joe’s copied Tajín, Fernández needed to grow bigger, quicker. “We had a lot of competition,” he says.

His plant was hitting capacity—produ­cing around 7.5 million pounds of Tajín annually—but Walmart wanted more. So he spent

$50 million, from his own savings and a small loan, to build a plant that was eight times larger. It opened in 2020, and sales at Walmart have since soared; they now make up 50% of Tajín’s revenue. There’s still plenty of room to grow: Only 7% of American households bought Tajín last year. That means there are still a lot of tables Tajín can hit for the first time.

One idea is to hook ’em young by selling to American public schools. Individual Tajín seasoning packets, launched in 2015, have caught on: Kids like to sprinkle the powder on boring broccoli and carrots. Tajín now has 552 school districts under contract and delivered more than 55 million low-sodium sachets last year. It hopes to double that by 2030.

Next up? Brick-and-mortar retail stores. Of course, the flagship shop for this very Mexican brand will be in America. Fernández is even investing in regional U.S. peppers after acquiring New Mexico’s famed hatch green chile brand Paulita’s in 2022. After all, it took him eight years in Mexico to reach more than $10,000 in sales; he now does that in less than an hour in America. No wonder he’s all in on the USA.

— Additional reporting by Maria Gracia Santillana Linares.

MORE FROM FORBES