| 3 min Read

Eat, Drink, and Be Spicy: A Texas Pete Holiday Merch Story

You’ve heard of an advent calendar filled with chocolates or candy, but what about cracking open those advent doors to reveal Texas Pete hot sauce? Ask and you shall receive…

Brand Fuel helped Texas Pete with their 2026 holiday project, called “The 12 Meals of Leftovers.”This advent-style calendar has 12 numbered doors. Each one reveals a 2oz bottle of Texas Pete and a recipe that turns leftovers into something deliciously new.

It is a playful answer to the question every host asks after the holiday feast: what do we do with all this dang turkey?

Watch the official commercial associated with the campaign.

What made the Texas Pete advent calendar tricky to build?

The idea came from Texas Pete and their creative team at McKinney, and it was bigger than a typical gift box. Each door needed its own mini bottle, its own recipe, and a QR code to bring that recipe to life. The whole thing had to be sturdy enough for the brand to pack and ship in-house, and it had to be ready before the Thanksgiving rush. That’s a tall order for a custom package!

McKinney brought in CYLNDR to produce the project, who then looped in Brand Fuel’s Senior Account Manager, Mike Edwards. Mike, along with teammates Erin Nicoletti, and Maribeth Aquino, jumped into action.

The box needed to hold twelve bottles safely, look great on camera, and stay within a fixed budget and a shipping size threshold.

How was the Texas Pete advent calendar made?

Mike and crew worked with our packaging manufacturer to engineer the custom holiday packaging from scratch. We went through multiple prototypes to get it right. The first sample was too flimsy for hand fulfillment, so we moved to a sturdier board. We also grew the box to 21 inches tall to make room for the title on top, while staying under the shipping size cutoff.

We solved the recipe challenge, too. Printing inside every door was cost-prohibitive, so we found a more practical way to deliver a unique recipe and QR code behind each one. Dielines, final artwork, and a photo-shoot deadline followed, all on a tight timeline.

The result: finished calendars ready to ship ahead of Thanksgiving. Two early kits even went to New York to be filmed for the launch content.

What’s inside the 12 Meals of Leftovers Calendar?

Every door hides a 2oz bottle, and the lineup mixes classic hot sauces, buffalo sauces, and sriracha:

  • 2x Texas Pete Original Hot Sauce
  • 1x Texas Pete Hotter Hot Sauce
  • 1x Texas Pete Jalapeño Hot Sauce
  • 1x Texas Pete Sauteed Garlic Flavor Hot Sauce
  • 1x Texas Pete Original Buffalo Sauce
  • 1x Texas Pete Extra Mild Buffalo Sauce
  • 1x Texas Pete Mild Buffalo Sauce
  • 1x Texas Pete Habanero Buffalo Sauce
  • 1x Texas Pete Honey Mustard Sauce
  • 1x CHA! by Texas Pete Sriracha Sauce
  • 1x Texas Pete Sweet CHAbanero Sriracha

Get your hands on one

The 12 Meals of Leftovers Calendar is live for a limited time on TexasPete.com, coupled with saucy launch videos on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

Thinking about custom holiday packaging or a seasonal gift product for your own brand? Brand Fuel can take it from first idea to finished box. Want to see another one? Check out our award-winning Burt’s Bees holiday packaging project.