It was bizarre. In the early Nineties, with the birth of Chile Pepper Magazine , the chile craze just took off. People ate it up. They were just fascinated with chiles, and we were sitting pretty. But labor costs were eating our lunch.
Peppers are a labor-intensive crop to harvest, package, and ship, especially on a large scale.
And we had requests from all over the globe. We got into drying chiles and found a surprising market in the floral industry, using dried chiles in arrangements. We sold at the Farmer's Market on Burnet Road for a long time, but it all got to be too much. Now I think the real market, especially with our interest in the scientific end, is seed research with seed companies and university-level horticultural and botanical research. It's no piece of cake.