Harold G. “Took” Osborn, who recently took the helm of a multinational company that operates in 195 countries across the planet, is just as at home on the Gulf of Mexico or out in the Atchafalaya Basin instead of globetrotting as the CEO of the McIlhenny Co.

If you had to label a family as Iberian royalty, it would be hard not to choose the McIlhennys for the role.

If you had to label a family as Iberian royalty, it would be hard not to choose the McIlhennys for the role.

The family’s company and its signature Tabasco brand are synonymous with the Avery Island fields and production facility where the products have been created for the past 150 years.

It wouldn’t be accurate to apply those regal trappings to the newest head of the family’s corporate dynasty. Harold G. “Took” Osborn has spent the last six years circling the globe as the leader of the McIlhenny Co.’s international sales and marketing team, racking up thousands of frequent-flyer miles as he helped push the company’s products out to 195 countries across the globe.

When the work ended, though, the last leg of the trip was always a flight to Louisiana and back to Avery Island.

“This is where I would prefer to be,” Osborn said. “The week may start catching a flight to London, then off to Dubai on my way to Shanghai, but at the end of the day this is home.”

As a member of the fifth generation of the McIlhenny family to be involved in the Tabasco legacy, he is not only in tune with the needs of the international business that Tabasco has become, he said, but also acutely aware of the need to take care of the family’s home base.

“We’ve been given an opportunity and the wherewithal to work with coastal restoration,” Osborn said. “It’s part of the company’s ethos, and part of my management style. I’m more likely to be rubbing elbows with people on the floor or in the corridors instead of being in an office somewhere.”

That Everyman demeanor does not mean he is not a force to be reckoned with in the boardroom. Osborn’s educational pedigree and resumé could be stacked up against any non-descendant who wanted to apply for his new gig.

Aside from the fact that he was raised working on Avery Island, both with the McIlhenny Co. and at the Avery Island salt mine, he also graduated from the University of Southwest Louisiana before pursuing his masters degree in environmental science from Oxford University.

Add to that decades of experience across the company, from operations and agriculture to land management and new product development, and Osborn’s business chops would appear to be perfectly suited to his new role.

“As family companies evolve, not many make it to the fifth generation,” Osborn said. “We even have a couple of the sixth generation working here. It’s all about having a love for this place.”

Even with all the training and love, there is still the day-to-day trial and error that goes with keeping the Tabasco brand ahead of its competitors.

“We continue to innovate and try new products,” he said. “In fact, I tried three new flavors this morning. Two were good, one, well, not.”

The company always has been willing to experiment. In the 1930s, Tabasco produced its own line of canned foods — corn, okra, even tinned oysters. Osborn was involved in an experiment with reintroducing jalapenos to Avery Island, but that effort fell flat.

“It seemed like a good fit,” he said. “There were peppers being grown there back in the 1950s, but they were in small plots, so we were trying to bring that back. At any given time we may have five or six new products that we are trying out.”

The challenge for Osborn is to keep ahead of that curve as flavors and tastes change in the new global economy.

“There’s a lot of flavors that come out of southwest Louisiana,” Osborn said. “But there is also a global palate. Everyone is so much more experienced. So we are upping our game at Avery Island.”

And, whether he is walking the paths of Avery Island with his wife Suzanne or logging miles with one of his sales teams across the planet, that’s just how he likes it. Even after sampling the food and culture in more than 60 countries, it’s still the flavors of Louisiana that draw him.

“People come here and complain about the heat,” he laughed. “I love it. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”