David McCulley, a San Antonio firefighter, turns his decades-old family barbecue sauce recipe into a hit product, now available at Central Market.
SAN ANTONIO — What started as a family recipe made for fellow firefighters in San Antonio is now turning into something much bigger.
David McCulley, a San Antonio firefighter and founder of Torcatha Barbecue Sauce, says the recipe goes back decades in his family. For years, he made it from scratch for crews at the fire station before people around him started pushing him to bottle it.
“So it’s my dad’s 40-year-old recipe,” McCulley said. “And I’ve been making it for the last 12 years for the San Antonio Fire Department. They’ve been asking me to bottle it since I’ve been making it from scratch for them.”
What began as something shared at shift meals and cookouts quickly started getting attention from other firefighters too.
“Yeah, I would make it for like UFC fight nights,” McCulley said. “When it was my turn to cook at the station they would say, ‘I don’t even like barbecue sauce, but if you bottle this, I would actually buy it.’”
Now, that same sauce is on Central Market shelves across Texas. McCulley says it officially landed there Friday, including in San Antonio.
“It’s just me and my wife running the company and as of Friday, it’s on all 10 Central Market shelves from here Austin, Houston and Dallas,” McCulley said.
The sauce comes in three spice levels: a mild version, a medium option with a little more kick, and the spiciest one. McCulley says that hottest version has turned out to be the most popular both in San Antonio and in Paris.
Getting to this point took much more than just a good recipe. McCulley says the process involved months of paperwork and applying for a Texas grant designed to help local products grow beyond the state.
“And it took me months what I’m going to use it for,” McCulley said. “How it’s going to promote my product, how it’s going to promote Texas. They really want you to promote Texas products to the world.”
That push is already paying off. McCulley says the sauce is being sold in Paris and is even making its way into the French Riviera on yachts, giving the San Antonio-made product a surprisingly global audience.
“It’s a little surreal,” McCulley said. “The fact that a different side of the world loves our family barbecue sauce… it’s mind blowing.”
Still, McCulley says the story remains rooted in San Antonio, the city where he was born, raised and continues to work as a firefighter.
“Yeah. Born and raised here in San Antonio… so we’ve been ingrained in San Antonio our whole life.”
For local shoppers, that means a sauce that started at a San Antonio fire station is now a lot easier to find — no trip to Paris or the French Riviera required.