The argument that started Leo’s Fire Co.

Three brothers, one backyard pit, forty-two recipes, and a notebook nobody could agree about.

1962 — Joaquín builds the first pit

Our story starts with our grandfather, Joaquín Lopez. He moved his family from Mexico to Lockhart, Texas in 1962, took a job at the Smitty’s Market kitchen, and built a brick pit in the alley behind his house on Wichita Street. Every Sunday for the next forty years he cooked something on that pit. He never followed recipes. He never wrote anything down.

What he taught his three sons — Pedro, Miguel, and Leo — was that good food is an argument. You taste, you adjust, you argue with the person standing next to you about whether it needs more salt. Then you taste again. Then you write down nothing.

2010 — The notebook starts

When Joaquín passed in 2009, his sons realized they had no record of any of it. Pedro and Miguel both had decent memories. Leo, the youngest, had been ten years younger and ten years quieter, and had been losing the argument his whole life. So he started writing. He wrote down what each brother said the recipe should be. He wrote down what they all agreed on after the third try. He wrote down what their cousin Veronica added when she came down from El Paso for Easter.

Leo’s notebook reached 42 recipes by 2018. Thirty of them had been argued over more than once. Twelve of them were undisputed. Those twelve became our first product line.

2019 — The bottling kitchen

We opened our 1,400-square-foot facility on West San Antonio Street in March of 2019. The pit is in the back lot — built from the same Lockhart kiln-fired brick our grandfather used. The kitchen is small enough that we know every bottle that leaves it.

We made one decision early that has shaped everything since: we will never grow past what we can hand-make. Our maximum batch size is 40 gallons. Most of our sauces ferment for 90 days. Our spice grinder is a small stone mill we bought out of a closed sausage shop in Elgin. The day we have to switch to a continuous-belt grinder is the day we stop being Leo’s Fire Co.

What you’re tasting when you open a bottle

Every sauce, rub, and provision we ship is made under three rules:

• No liquid smoke. Smoke comes from a fire. We have a fire.
• No preservatives, no thickeners, no anti-caking agents. If a sauce needs a stabilizer, it isn’t ready yet.
• Real fermentation only. Our mashes ferment 90 days with wild lactobacillus from the pepper skins. We don’t add starter cultures, vinegar, or sugar to speed it up.

Where we are right now

Where you can find us

Our 12-product line is available right here on this site — we ship anywhere in the US via USPS Priority Mail in 24–48 hours. We’re also stocked seasonally at a handful of pit-master shops and butcher counters across Texas and the southwest. If you’re in Lockhart, our kitchen door is open Tuesday through Saturday — drop in, taste a few things, and meet the family.

Whatever bottle you pick up first — start there. Taste it the way Joaquín taught us. Then write us and tell us if we got it right.

Get in touch