Robert D. Vasvary, better known as Tennessee Bob, is a Navy veteran, an electrical engineering graduate, a blues harmonica player and the author of the Pepper People books. The hot sauce came out of the same place the stories did.

Bob lives in Boca Raton, Florida with his wife Nicolina, known on the ranch as Lady Fingers, and their son Ethan, known as Dragon's Breath. The family spends much of the year in Nikki's native Quito, Ecuador, and that is where El Rancho del Fuego comes from. The peppers are real, the farm is real, and the characters grew out of both.

Every sauce is small batch, made with locally sourced peppers and its own spice blend. Every bottle carries a Pepper Person on the label, and every Pepper Person has a story in one of the books. Bob's other writing includes the teen adventure novel The Big House and short stories in the Bowers House Writers Group anthologies.

Most weekends you will find him at South Florida markets in character, pouring samples and telling the fables. That is the whole business model: taste the sauce, meet the character, take the bottle home.