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Honey of an idea . . . Chris Leiss ’82 and Ted Brack ’84

Chris Leiss ’82 and former roommate Ted Brack ’84 had an idea for purple honey. Today, it’s Horned Frog Honey.

Honey of an idea . . .  Chris Leiss ’82 and Ted Brack ’84

Chris Leiss ’82 and Ted Brack ’84 combined their school spirit with a business idea a year ago and started Horned Frog Honey.

Honey of an idea . . . Chris Leiss ’82 and Ted Brack ’84

Chris Leiss ’82 and former roommate Ted Brack ’84 had an idea for purple honey. Today, it’s Horned Frog Honey.

Chris Leiss ’82 awoke with purple on his mind. So he called his friend and former roommate Ted Brack ’84 in the middle of the night last September.

Leiss, a TCU football and baseball letterman and former advertising executive for several Fort Worth-Dallas radio stations, wondered if Brack had a way of making honey purple.

“I woke up with this idea for purple honey, and so I literally called Ted at 2 or 3 in the morning,” Leiss recalls. “I said, ‘Could we make it purple for TCU?’”

Brack’s late father had owned a honey company, and the family was still in the business, but they’d never made TCU-tinted honey bee-fore.

“He said, ‘What do you think of purple honey?’” Brack says. “Nobody else in the world has it.”

Once he was more awake, Brack — who started four seasons for the TCU football team as a linebacker/defensive end — began looking into his friend’s proposal. Turns out, it was doable. But it wasn’t easy. It took months for the experts at Walker Honey Farm in Rogers near Temple to work with a kosher food company in California to develop a natural blackberry coloring that matched TCU’s exact shade.

Leiss and Brack have begun selling their purple product online and at The Varsity sports store on Bluebonnet Circle. Brack and Leiss credit Leiss’ children — Whitley Leiss Rubinson ’10, William Leiss ’11 and Micah Leiss ’14 — with helping get this business launched. Brack’s family plays an important role, too. Horned Frog Honey is produced by Walker Honey Farm with help from Roganville, Texas-based Brack Honey Co.

There’s also a charitable aspect. Visitors to the Horned Frog Honey website can order LT #5 Honey, partial proceeds of which benefit the Touching Lives Foundation of LaDainian Tomlinson ’05. They also sell pink honey to support Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Purple honey isn’t the only product they’ve perfected. Several stores in Fort Worth — as well as the Horned Frog Honey website — will soon carry Purple Reign premium honey wine. The tag line is, “What Horned Frogs drink.”

Leiss, who in his day job is in charge of advertising for popular TCU fan site Killerfrogs.com, hopes the new wine will help his and Brack’s emerging honey venture continue to blossom.

 

On the Web:
Horned Frog Honey – hornedfroghoney.com

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