The 20th annual Hot Sauce Festival brought a little spice to the weekend Sunday afternoon at Waterloo Park. The event benefited the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas.

Festival goers were met with a sign that read, "This is no joke" when they formed a line to try some of Central Texas’ best hot sauces.

Brian Rush works for Tears of Joy, a local hot sauce shop in Austin. He was sampling a concoction called “The Source.”

“Pain on a stick. Who wants it?” he said.

Most people walked away from Rush’s table in search of water. His sauce had 7.1 million Scoville units of spiciness. A jalapeño pepper has up to 5,000 Scoville units.

"You'll live, I promise," Rush said.

Festival officials said the event came at the right time for the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas. The nonprofit has recently experienced a significant increase in demand for its services.

Branding John Turner is the Senior Director of Marketing for the food bank.

"In July, we had the most amount of food that's ever been shipped out of our distribution center, which is 2.7 million pounds of food,” he said. “That's about 2.2 million meals in July alone," he said.

The nonprofit has been shipping record amounts of food to 350 agencies in 27 counties.

"We're seeing donors, people who were previously donors of the food bank actually coming in having to use the food pantry themselves," Turner said.

According to documents the food bank recently filed with the IRS, the food bank brought in $42.8 million in 2009. The figure is a major increase from $23.6 million in 2008.

The money spent internally at the food bank also increased from $22.9 million in 2008 to $42.4 million in 2009. Last year, 82 percent of the food bank’s expenses were spent on helping other organizations feed those in need.

The forms also show 14 new employees for the organization. Employee salaries and other compensation increased by about $1 million.

Turner said the Hot Sauce Festival raised $14,000 and produced about 29,000 pounds of food for the food bank in 2009. The totals for this year’s festival will be determined Monday.