Getting into the Thick of BBQ Sauce

There are two kinds of BBQ sauce: The biggest. And the best.

The former can be determined pretty easily. Walk into any supermarket, convenience store or corner market and it will be what’s readily available. Sometimes it will be the only thing available. In case you need to know, it’s Kraft, closely followed by Heinz BBQ sauce. In their defense, they were also the first to market back in the late 40s and early 50s.

The latter is much more subjective. And regional for that matter. Your favorite barbecue sauce may only be available in your favorite BBQ restaurant. Or it might only be distributed within a 30-mile range of where it is made.

So how does the little guy compete against the big guys when it comes to BBQ sauces? Well, truthfully, it’s not easy. Walk the aisles of your local supermarket and you’ll see a wide variety of sauces, most of which have big marketing dollars behind them. Most small sauces don’t stand a chance in a supermarket, unless they are the local flavor, in which case, they probably aren’t going to be in the market in the next town over. And obviously, you’ll find more BBQ sauce in a supermarket in the South, than in, say, the Northeast.

Luckily, there’s the Internet. But even then, there’s a lot of competition.
A quick search for “barbecue sauce” on Google yields over 11,000,000 results.

So how do you stand out? How do people find you?

For starters you want to be sure you have a good website (unless you have an arrangement with one of the many “BBQ Sauce of the Month Club” websites, in which case, the following advice would apply to them as well.)

Whether you’re a BBQ Sauce Maker and Seller or just a Seller, here are some things to keep in mind:

Put your URL on the label or cap and give people a reason to visit your website: discounts on future bottles, interesting emails (recipes, stories from the grill, etc.), demonstration videos.

Make sure you have a Facebook Fan Page and/or Twitter page, and that you actively encourage people to join it. Maybe you even put your Facebook and Twitter info on the label, or in your restaurant. At the very least, put it on your site.

Offer up a lot of recipes. Mouth watering, keyword-rich recipes. The more ways people can find you, the better.

Make sure your site is ready for any new traffic. We’ve all heard about the site, that got mentioned on a TV show or a popular email newsletter, only to break down with the desired onslaught of traffic that came its way. That’s no way to succeed.

Tell your story on your website: BBQ Sauce aficionados don’t just want to know where their sauce came from, they want to know who it came from. Did you quit your white collar job to follow your passion? Were you a cook in the army? Had you never tried BBQ until your first trip to the South and that was the day everything changed? Did you drive across country “researching” BBQ? (Full disclosure: I drove across the country “researching” BBQ sauces and blogged about it back in 2002.)

People want to feel that by buying a particular BBQ sauce, they’re making a statement. They want to live the dream you had the courage to pursue, if only through their taste buds.

So, as you can see, there’s a lot that can be done to help improve the visibility of your BBQ sauce.

Obviously, if you can get on a nationally syndicated cooking show, you’ll have plenty of interest in your product. But even then, you’ll want to be sure that your site is ready to do the heavy lifting.
There are multiple kinds of sauce but tomato-based sauces are the most popular brands nationally.  Regional styles include:

BBQ Sauce by Region:
Carolinas: Thin viscosity and vinegary are the unifying characterizations of barbecue sauces from this area. In eastern North Carolina, the sauce is seasoned with black pepper, cayenne and other spices while in western North Carolina, small amounts of molasses or ketchup are added. Yellow-mustard shows up in barbecue sauces from the Columbia area of South Carolina. Further south in Georgia, the sauces are notably sweeter with brown sugar and ketchup.

Memphis: Thicker sauces with more of a ketchup/mustard blend. Dry rubs sans sauce are common on grilled products.

Kansas City: Tomato-based, sweet with some heat at times, medium to thick viscosity. This style was the basis of the first commercial barbecue sauce from Kraft Foods.

Texas: Thick with molasses, Worcestershire sauce, chili peppers and powders used, as well as ingredients such as coffee.

Innovations in BBQ:
Spray-BQ from William and Williams Gourmet Foods in Port Washington, WI is a spray-bottle of sauce that is sprayed onto meat while it cooks.  It comes in six flavors and is marketed regionally.

Chef Hymie Grande’ BBQ sauce has no high fructose corn syrup and is the first BBQ sauce to meet the American Diabetes Assoc. requirements.  The sauce is made in Bridgeton, NJ.

FunniBonzLLC: Owner Jim Barbour was laid off in 2006 and was looking for his passion and cooking at home — he made a sauce he liked.  Took it to his local grocery (in Pennington NJ) and did in-store demos, selling $10,000 in his first week.  He has kept expanding, is now in Whole Foods stores, and has 3 varieties.  Just broke even in Aug. 2009.

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