By Dave Donelson

Ask for a "bowl of red" in Texas, and you may well taste the chili seasoning that's been sold for five generations by the Pendery family. Their ancestor DeWitt Clinton Pendery is widely (although not exclusively) credited with the invention of chili powder.

DeWitt Clinton Pendery opened a dry goods business in Fort Worth in 1870, not long after chili became popular in Texas. "My best guess is that he was selling the spices for chili when the ability to manufacture them with an electric grinder came about with the electrification of Fort Worth in 1885," explains Pat Haggerty, owner with his wife, Mary (née Pendery), of Pendery's World of Chiles & Spices. "We know he was selling the original 'Chiltomaline' mixture in the 1880s because the oldest newspaper ad we have is dated 1890. It's hard to date exactly, since the newspaper office burned down shortly before then."

Clint Haggerty, their son and the fifth-generation proprietor of the business, describes Pendery's today as a "taste merchant." While it's known for its chili seasonings, the company sells hundreds of spices and spice mixes as well as other food items like hot sauces and salsas. It also offers hard goods like cookbooks, aprons and small appliances. Its $2.8 million in annual sales is divided about equally between retail customers (through mail order and the store in Fort Worth) and wholesale (through food distributors like Fresh Point, a Sysco subsidiary).

Chiltomaline, a combination of ground chiles, cumin, oregano and other spices, is still available—and very popular. It's one of more than 300 spices and blends in the product line. "We also do custom blends in small batches," Clint points out. "It's turned into a unique niche for us."

Clint, 46, joined the family concern in 1999 after earning an MBA from the University of Dallas and a stint as a business consultant. "My parents took over the business from my grandfather in 1987," he says. "I came in because my father had been getting a little older and was looking for more help. It seemed like a good time for the transition." His father still comes in from time to time. His mother—the first woman to inherit the family company—designs the mail-order catalog.

Pendery's, which bills itself as the oldest family-owned and -operated business in Texas, has seen change, of course, although more incremental than revolutionary. "Every generation kind of changes it a little bit," Haggerty says. "I can remember my parents selling 25 cents' worth of chili powder using a meat scale and putting it in a paper bag. Today we use nylon-clad barrier bags and [resealable] standup pouches. When my parents took over the business, we ran our own truck around to wholesale accounts to make deliveries. Now everything is through distributors. You take what you were given and try to make it better." Clint engineered the distributor network, which boosted wholesale revenues and opened markets in cities from coast to coast.

In 2014, Clint revived Pendery's Charity Chili Cookoff, a company event that had fallen by the wayside. Over the last three years, the event has raised $365,000 for local charities. About 75 cooks participate, drawing hundreds of spectators to the venue on the Southern Methodist University campus in Dallas. The event is also sanctioned as a regional qualifying event by several nationwide chili cook-off organizations.

Clint expects the company to stay in the family, even though he doesn't have any children of his own. His sister, Beatrice Haggerty Chester, 43, has two kids not far from entering the workforce. She splits her workweek between Pendery's and her husband's office-space-leasing business.

Many family company owners relish the ability to take the long view of business decisions. Clint sees plenty of value in peering the opposite direction as well. "We look at how we came through the Great Recession, then realize that our forebears had to cope with the Great Depression," he says. "Anytime I'm not having a great day, I think of them."

Dave Donelson is a business writer in West Harrison, N.Y.

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