When new McIlhenny Co. CEO Adam Graves was a kid, his family moved from rural Mississippi to Concepcion, Chile, where his parents encouraged him to immerse himself in his new environment.
βThey told me, 'Your new friends are outside and they don't speak English, so good luck,'" said Graves, who is now fluent in Spanish.
That early training in rapid assimilation has served the food industry executive well as he's relocated multiple times for posts in Switzerland, Colombia, Ecuador, Canada and the United States during a 25-year career.
±υ²ΤΜύFebruary, Graves, 47, put his adaptability to the test again when he moved from Cleveland, where he had been president of the pizza and snacking division at global food conglomerateΒ NestlΓ©, to south Louisiana to take the top job at McIlhenny, the family-owned maker of world-famous Tabasco hot sauces and other pepper-based condiments.
In some ways, the jump from the northeastern Ohio office of a 270,000-person corporate behemoth to tiny Avery Island, where roughly 250 employees produce Tabasco the way it's been made for the last 158 years, is as much of a cultural change as any journey abroad. And, for Graves' new employer, hiring him for the CEO role is an even bigger departure.Β
Since Edmund McIlhenny first put hot sauce into glass bottles emblazoned with the now-iconic green, red and white diamond logo, seven of his descendants have run the business that turns Tabasco peppers into a flavorful condiment sold in nearly 200 countries. But in April 2025, when former company CEO Harold "Took" Osborn, Edmund's great-great-grandson, announced his retirement at age 62 β and none of the McIlhenny family members were ready to take overΒ β it created an opportunity for an outsider to step in.
Adam Graves, CEO of McIlhenny Company, the company that makes Tabasco products, poses at the McIlhenny Company Cooperate Offices on Avery Island, La., Wednesday, June 3, 2026.
STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
Now, Graves has taken the reins as Louisiana's most famous food company battles thousands of other brands to capitalize on growth opportunities for the hot sauce market that include the rising popularity of spicy foods, a few as-yet-untapped international markets, and the evolution of e-commerce.Β
"This is a role I've been prepping for my entire career," Graves said. "I'm excited to help the McIlhenny Co. grow."
'Job of a lifetime'
The search for an outsider CEO ready to take charge of a family-owned venture operating above ancient salt deposits in the middle of coastal marshes would have made a good reality TV show.
Former CEO Osborn's departure came at a time when several young family members were still βin the learning process of their careers,β according to Christy Brown,Β a McIlhenny family member and chair of the board. As a result, the board enlisted global executive search firm Egon Zehnder to identify more than two dozen candidates with backgrounds in food and consumer goods. Then, they slowly whittled that group down to a handful of prospects who came to Avery Island for interviews.
Ultimately, the board homed in on Graves because of his leadership style, international experience and instinct to put the consumer βat the heart of everything,β according to Brown.
A window offers visitors a chance to observe the area where peppers are blended as Tabasco hot sauce is produced on Avery Island, La., Wednesday, June 3, 2026.
STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
Despite being based in Cleveland for several years, Graves also had Southern roots to go along with his global pedigree. He was born in McComb, Mississippi, after his parents spent several years in New Orleans. Later, he graduated from Samford University near Birmingham, Alabama, before attending business school in Arizona.
Between July and the end of the year, Graves met with McIlhenny representatives about 10 times, including his first visit to the island, where production lines can crank out up to a million bottles of hot sauce daily.
"I walked into the conference room and the whole board was there, and all of the previous CEOs' eyes were on me from portraits on the walls," Graves said.
A breakfast meeting last November at the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans more or less sealed the deal, and Graves received the official job offer on Christmas Day.
βHe just stood head and shoulders above the field of people we spoke with,β Brown said.Β
In February, Graves started a monthslong onboarding process that required working in Tabasco's mash warehouse and blending facility and on bottling lines before settling into his CEO's office. From there, he said he's worked to connect with everybody from the legal team filing lawsuits to protectΒ Β to warehouse workers shipping out product and servers in the island's restaurant.
Graves said he's been trying to "meet people where they are, seeking to understand before I seek to be understood."
Growth is the goal
Five months in, Graves said his primary mission is to grow the revenue, market share and brand awareness of a company that ranks among the top three players in the U.S. hot sauce category, which has been .
Tabasco doesn't reveal financial details, but past reports have placed the company's annual revenue in the .
Tabasco's two biggest competitors at the moment are Frank's RedHot, a century-old brand originally founded in Ohio using peppers from New Iberia, and Cholula, a sauce from Mexico that came to the U.S. in the late-1980s. Both brands were acquired in the last decade by publicly traded McCormick & Co., which also owns Zatarain's, the New Orleans food company.
But after a surge of startups this century, there are thousands of hot sauce brands globally, all competing for consumers looking for fiery foods in a world where more than . To wit: As sacrilegious as it might seem to Louisianans, a decade-old Taco Bell-branded sauce ranked No. 3 among last year.
The competition isnβt hurting sales, according to Graves, who said Tabasco notched record revenue in 2025 and is on track to set a new bar this year.
Barrels of peppers sealed with salt photographed during a self-guided tour of the Tabasco production on Avery Island, La., Wednesday, June 3, 2026.
STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
The CEO said McIlhenny sees additional opportunity in international markets, especially countries like China or India, and among young consumers, who eat more hot sauce on more foods than ever before.
"Tabasco is not just for pizzas, burgers or Tex-Mex," he said. "We even have consumers that add it to vanilla ice cream for a little a bit of heat and flavor."
The rising popularity of GLP-1 weight loss drugs like Ozempic and WegovyΒ β which threaten sales for the food industry overall β could also be good for McIlhenny, as consumers find ways to maximize flavor and "make every bite count," he said.
E-commerce, which accounts for more than 20% of McIlhenny's sales, is another opportunity to grow, as more and more consumers make purchase decisions on devices.
"We haven't come close to the ceiling of that yet," Graves said.
No doubt part of McIlhenny's strategy will be to try new things, the way it has debuted more than a half-dozen new sauces since the 1990s. But the company will likely lean into tradition as well.
As Graves has seen firsthand since February, McIlhenny's signature βseed to sauceβ manufacturing method for its flagship product is effectively the same as it was in 1868.
No sale on the horizon
Tabasco isn't the world's only well-known food company that's still family-owned. But the list is very short.
Mars Inc., parent company of M&Ms, is a still under family control. Louisiana's Baumer Foods, maker of Crystal hot sauce for the past 103 years, is an example closer to home.
But these are the exception, not the rule. Typically, century-old brands wind up being sold by descendants who want to cash in their equity or simply no longer want to run the business.
Graves and Brown both said the hiring of a CEO from outside the family isn't a signal the McIlhenny family is contemplating a move like that.
"Usually when you have a leadership change, you're looking to repair something," Graves said. "That's not at all the case here. It's simply that there was a gap in capabilities in terms of generations, so they looked at the marketplace, and I was fortunate to be the one selected."
Visitors walk in front of the Tabasco Country Store on Avery Island, La., Wednesday, June 3, 2026.
STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
The newly minted CEO said there's a good chance he'll hand the reins to a family member one day. And, to help him in the meantime, the board redefined his role before he started.
Said Brown: βWe tried to put in systems and processes where Adam can come in and focus on the making and selling of Tabasco and not have to worry about the extraneous family issues that you know come our way.β