Tabasco Sauce Company spices up Dillard University with a hot internship. The Tabasco Sauce Company created an internship for students to create innovative ways to provide information about their products to the African-American community.

“This program is designed to raise awareness about the products of the Tabasco Company,” stated Tabasco intern Chantell Garrett. “We conduct surveys and events, taste-testers, and give out prizes not only on campus, but in churches and surrounding communities.”

Garrett is a graduating senior at Dillard University and a pre-Hurricane Katrina Tabasco intern. “There wasn’t any resources post-Katrina and Dillard became the only school without the program,” Garrett said. “I was the only person doing the internship.” For a year and a half, the Tabasco internship lay dormant at Dillard.

The internship began in 2001, but it temporarily ended due to Hurricane Katrina. The Tabasco Sauce Company offered the program at four other historically black colleges and/or universities: Xavier University, Southern University of New Orleans, Southern University of Baton Rouge, and Grambling State University.

This program selects two interns per year through an interviewing process. It includes a stipend per semester and documentation in a professional portfolio stating that the intern worked with a professional company. Although the internship targets marketing students, non-marketing majors may also apply. The newly appointed Tabasco intern Derrica Arceneaux said, “I would recommend anyone to take the opportunity to gain knowledge and experience of their desired field of interest including marketing.”

With this internship, students get to conduct research and try their hand in advertising, promoting, and marketing. They have the opportunity to work hands-on and not just in a classroom. “The company calls us [the interns] ‘myth busters’ because we are here to create marketing strategies to show African-Americans that Tabasco is not just a pepper sauce, but has many different flavors and products,” explained Garrett.

For more information about the Tabasco Sauce Company internship, Tabasco products, and/or upcoming events contact Advisor Janice Burrell-Pinera at (504) 813-5352 or Chantell Garrett at [email protected].