Done with Bravado

The most unlikely entrepreneurs: Duo turns a whiskey-fueled idea into aburgeoning sauce empire

Jeremiah Tallerine, left, and James Nelson, right, have known one another sincehigh school.
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The two conceived the idea of Bravado Spice in Nelson's kitchen — they considerthis entrepreneurial venture a career, not a job.
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Tallerine, who supplies the business savvy, says that he can make the salsa inhis sleep at this point.
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Nelson is the culinary mastermind behind the operation, coming up with complexand distinctive flavors for their two signature sauces.
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James Nelson and Jeremiah Tallerine are long-haired and bearded, with an appearance and an air that seems more punk rocker than entrepreneur. But don't let first impressions fool you: These two are the brains and the brawn behind Bravado Spice.

The pair has developed a whiskey-fueled idea into a burgeoning business in the matter of months, thanks to unforeseen good fortune with their Kickstarter campaign — which brought in 273 percent of their original $7,000 goal — plus a dream-team dynamic. And they're not stopping here.

Nelson is the culinary mastermind behind the operation, the one who came up with the unique mixtures and perfected the recipes of their two signature sauces, Roasted Pineapple & Habañero Sauce and Crimson Chili Sauce.

"He wanted to get his creation and creativity into the mouths of the masses," Tallerine says.

"He wanted to get his creation and creativity into the mouths of the masses," says Tallerine, who had the Internet business savvy to make that happen.

At barely a month old, Bravado Spice has already established a presence around the Bayou City. The guys can be spotted at area farmer's markets, their sauces stocked on store shelves (at Ruggles Green on West Alabama and Revival Market) and worked into the menus at food trucks as varied as Chi'Lantro, H-town strEATs and NOLA's Creole2Geaux.

Plus, they're working with other brick and mortar restaurants — El Gran Malo, for example, and Royal Oak Bar & Grill, which hosted the company's launch party in early October — to get their sauce featured in drinks and dishes.

If it seems like they've been busy, that's because they have. As Nelson tells CultureMap, "When you start with nothing, you have to build your own market."

The sauce of yore

As Nelson and Tallerine see it, hot sauce companies historically fall into two camps: Those that make a decent, mass-produced sauce and the others who make the hottest hot sauce possible. It was due time for a third party.

Bravado Spice distinguishes itself in an inundated industry as a hand-crafted, preservative-free, artisan sauce that combines all natural ingredients in a painstaking process.

Both the Roasted Pineapple & Habañero Sauce and the Crimson Chili are meant to be used as complements to dishes, not as a condiments. And their unique flavor profiles lend to that — they work well on pretty much everything. (I can speak from personal experience.)

Bravado Spice distinguishes itself in an inundated industry as a hand-crafted, preservative-free, artisan sauce that combines all natural ingredients in a painstaking process.

Take the sample menu at their launch party, which included a Hawaiian pizza using the pineapple sauce as its base, topped with melted cheese, salty ham and crispy red onion, as well as basic hot wings slathered in each sauce. Or a dark chocolate and butter cream truffle that makes use of the smoky Crimson. Or the Empanadas Veracruzanas at Sirena Seafood that incorporates hot sauce and seafood.

The team is currently working out of Kitchen Incubator, taking over the building each weekend for the prep work and labor involved in filling several hundred bottles, but with a kitchen operations manager on staff and a new vendor signed almost every day, they're already quickly outgrowing that space.

Nelson acknowledged that they chose the word "bravado" because it implied stupid and brave, but that blind gusto has gotten them this far. Bravado Spice is hoping to be everywhere in the city by the end of the year — and to become the first Houston-based hot sauce company to go national in the not-too-distant future.

And that's not to mention the other far-fetched condiment concoctions they have up their sleeves. (A hint: It's going to be delicious.)

"If you have an idea and you think it merits an action, just do it," Tallerine says.

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Jobs report

Texas clocks in as No. 7 best state to find a job, new report says

Photo by The Jopwell Collection on Unsplash

It's easier to find a job in Texas than in nearly any other state.

If you’re hunting for a job in Texas amid a tough employment market, you stand a better chance of landing it here than you might in other states.

A new ranking by personal finance website WalletHub of the best states for jobs puts Texas at No. 7. The Lone Star State lands at No. 2 in the economic environment category and No. 18 in the job market category.

Massachusetts tops the list, and West Virginia appears at the bottom.

To determine the most attractive states for employment, WalletHub compared the 50 states across 34 key indicators of economic health and job market strength. Ranking factors included employment growth, median annual income, and average commute time.

“Living in one of the best states for jobs can provide stable conditions for the long term, helping you ride out the fluctuations that the economy will experience in the future,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo says.

In September, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas led the U.S. in job creation with the addition of 195,600 jobs over the past 12 months.

While Abbott proclaimed Texas is “America’s jobs leader,” the state’s level of job creation has recently slowed. In June, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted that the state’s year-to-date job growth rate had dipped to 1.8 percent, and that even slower job growth was expected in the second half of this year.

The August unemployment rate in Texas stood at 4.1 percent, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Throughout 2025, the monthly rate in Texas has been either four percent or 4.1 percent.

By comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate in August was 4.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2025, the monthly rate for the U.S. has ranged from 4 percent to 4.3 percent.

Here’s a rundown of the August unemployment rates in Texas’ four biggest metro areas:

Austin — 3.9 percent
Dallas-Fort Worth — 4.4 percent
San Antonio — 4.4 percent
Houston — 5 percent

Unemployment rates have remained steady this year despite layoffs and hiring freezes driven by economic uncertainty. However, the number of U.S. workers who’ve been without a job for at least 27 weeks has risen by 385,000 this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August. That month, long-term unemployed workers accounted for about one-fourth of all unemployed workers.

An August survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed a record-low 44.9 percent of Americans were confident about finding a job if they lost their current one.

This story originally was published on our sister site, InnovationMap.

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