The makers of Fort Worth-based Mrs. Renfro's Salsa say they have been dealing with supply chain issues during the pandemic, but for them, the pandemic also led to a spike in sales. Renfro Foods President Doug Renfro says sales jumped 35% in March 2020.
Renfro says the company had just bought new machinery in January of 2020 to increase production from 135 jars an hour to 195.
"It's better to be lucky than smart," he says. "We had lined up more than $1 million in new machinery and implementation to be able to go faster."
But as demand increased, Renfro says the company was struggling to keep up. He says Mrs. Renfro's orders bottles four months in advance and has a local supplier of tomatoes.
"God makes tomatoes between June and September, and that's it," he says. "The fact that we need 30% more doesn't matter. They didn't make 30% more."
For several months, Mrs. Renfro's adjusted to a different lid without the normal branding. He says those were only temporary, and many customers now consider them a collector's item.
"We did half a million of those because that's all we could get. Not the normal jar, not the normal lid. I also found out nobody cares," Renfro says, laughing. "We got exactly zero complaints about that. The label was the same, which is what they're really looking at. It's the same jar. More importantly, it was the same pricing and the same great product."
He says when the pandemic started, he was surprised to see a run on his salsa comparable to the run on toilet paper.
"Say they like our number one seller, Habanero Salsa, they would buy, like, seven jars off the shelf," Renfro says. "We felt, 'who knew?' It's actually quite an honor people were that desperate for it."
Renfro says people were also experimenting more with different flavors. As more people were cooking at home instead of going to restaurants, some specialty flavors increased by more than 200%.
"Our theory was the Chipotle Corn, Pineapple, Tequila salsas, those sorts of things you may not want on your chips for the party, but you might think that will be fantastic with chicken or beef or shrimp, whatever protein, tofu, for that matter," he says. "One of the funnier things that will happen to me is people will say, 'I just wish you had a hot peach salsa.' I'll look at them and go, 'You know it's not illegal to put a little bit of the Habanero in the Peach,' and they're like, 'I never thought about that.' Now that people are working from home, there's lots of time in the day to do things like that."
Even as more people have returned to restaurants, Renfro says sales have dropped just 5% from their peak.
"When will people eat like they did pre-pandemic?" he asks. "I don't know they ever will. People have learned it's fun to cook at home. It's a family experience. It's an experience with friends. They've learned to eat different things."
Renfro says he even had to add a third shift to handle the increase in demand. He says he has not dealt with the same labor shortage as many businesses because many of his employees have spent years with the company.
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