Emporium Spice Company Delivers the Heat
By Stacy Moser | Photography by Justin Borja
When you enter the Emporium Spice Company storefront in rural Temple you’re instantly met with the smell of chili powder. As you peruse the shelves in the charming retail shop, new aromas begin to dance in your head. Look around and you’ll notice other customers doing the same thing you are—lifting packages of spice mixes and jars of herbs to their noses to inhale the tantalizing fragrances emanating from them.
For anyone who likes to cook, Emporium Spice is akin to a candy store for a sugar addict.
Johnny and Lisa Walker have built this business from the ground up—literally—using the earth’s bounty to create enticing combinations of herbs and spices for home cooks and restaurant chefs alike to use in their own culinary creations.
The couple met in the 1980s when Lisa was a step-aerobics instructor and Johnny was, as she admits, her favorite student. “We did lots of cooking together,” she says. “Our social life was very much centered around food.”
“Remember that time we made lobster at your apartment?” Johnny asks her. “The cracking of it went pretty badly. I think it hit the wall.”
Lisa smiles at her husband. “You were a little aggressive with it.”
Back then, Johnny owned two sandwich shops, one in Temple and one in Waco. The best seller on the menu, though, was his homemade chili bowls. He eventually sold both shops in order to pursue the sale of his chili mix through grocery stores and restaurants. Then he and Lisa grew the business and began to offer a variety of spices and pre-mixed spice blends for everything from white bread to jerky seasoning to Pontchartrain sauce.
Lisa calls Johnny The Chemist. “He can taste something and detect what ingredients are in it—it’s amazing. Our restaurant customers come to us and say, ‘This is our recipe, can you produce a spice mix to duplicate it?’ Or they say, ‘Can you create this flavor for us?’ We match what they want and get it just right.”
Johnny describes his process when he creates a new spice mix. “I decide what food I want to sit down and enjoy. I visualize the flavor I’m aiming for, then I choose an initial ingredient and branch off of that. Of course, I play with it. That’s the fun of it. I nip and tuck and get something we’re happy with,” he says.
“We recently put together a Russian spice blend because we wanted to get away from Southwest flavors a little bit,” Johnny says. “I wanted something that would set off a lamb dish. So we came up with a cinnamon base, then used Russian, Mediterranean and Moroccan blends of spices. I have to keep up with what customers might want. On Fort Hood, for instance, there are people from all over the world who are used to other flavors.”
Johnny is amused at the memory of his effort years ago to create a gumbo spice mix. “Lisa’s a Cajun girl,” he says.
“Her parents gave us invaluable feedback about my mix. They didn’t pull any punches, either. When he tasted my first batch, Lisa’s dad said, ‘Nah, that’s not even close.’ So I went back to square one.”
He chuckles, “I learned a valuable lesson back in my sandwich-shop days. What really told the story was what people left behind on their plate as they left the shop—what they didn’t eat. That tells the brutal truth right there!”
Lisa and Johnny are quite particular about where they source their herbs and spices. “My feeling is that Capsicum, which is the pepper family, grows best in New Mexico,” Johnny explains. “They’ve got it all. The right soil, the perfect temperatures and humidity levels. We source our peppers from a family-run operation out of the Hatch area.”
“But we do everything we can to source as locally to Temple as we can,” Lisa adds. “It’s really important to us to support this community.”
Just beyond the retail store, in the huge Emporium Spice warehouse, forklifts cruise between shelves filled with bags and boxes of spices and shrink-wrapped packaged mixes. “We also focus on doing custom blending for restaurants and restaurant chains in addition to our retail outlet,” Lisa explains.
The couple is very close with their employees, some of whom have been with the company for more than 20 years.
“These folks really know their stuff,” Johnny says proudly. “You know, there can be a color variation from crop to crop with spices—our crew can recognize the difference from a mile away. For instance, they can instantly tell the difference when Mediterranean oregano might accidentally be swapped with Mexican oregano—mixing them up is a big boo-boo! That takes heart, to care like they do.”
Lisa agrees, “We have some pretty significant competitors, but our customer service is what has kept our big accounts. Our clients know we can be completely depended upon to take care of them.”
“Emporium Spice isn’t equipment, or a building or the spices,” Johnny says. “It’s us. It’s our team. We are Emporium together.”
Pontchartrain Sauce Mix
This delicious sauce is a perfect complement to fish, chicken, pasta or rice.
Melt ½ cup unsalted butter in a saucepan. Add contents of package to butter, stirring constantly while bringing to a low boil for about 10 minutes. Whisk in 1 cup water and 1 cup half and half.
Reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally until thickened, about 2–3 minutes.
Lisa’s Top Five Tips to Get the Most Out of Spices
- Don’t store spices above or near the stove or oven. The heat will reduce the flavor of spices by drying them out. Always store spices in a cool, dry area.
- Take your time when you cook. Let a sauce simmer slowly to evaporate water and concentrate the flavors. This is called a reduction and is extremely important in flavor development.
- If you have picky eaters, you can still use Emporium chili mix. Just make the batch without the “fire” packet, then sprinkle it on the bowl of chili that you will serve the heat-lover in your family.
- Customers buy our spices for health reasons, like Ceylon cinnamon that is reported to increase blood circulation. We have a fellow come in to buy cardamom for hiccups. Another customer swears by our spice tea to help with the side effects of chemo.
- Watch out for monosodium glutamate in products—some people are sensitive to it. MSG excites the nerves in the taste buds, adding a sensation of flavor when you taste a dish. But some people experience headaches or swelling from it.
