E’s Best Barbecue Sauces are currently in 52 retail locations in 6 southern states and when time allows, we are continuing to seek out new locations for our sauces. We want to give a shout out to Debbie Farah, President and CEO of Bajalia International Group for alerting us to an opportunity to pitch the Tampa/Orlando Winn-Dixie stores as part of the Winn-Local campaign to stock local products in 30-50 stores in the area. Thank you Debbie for loving our sauces and the women in our family LOVE your jewelry. Go to www.bajalia.com and see why!

We applied for the Winn-Dixie opportunity, filled out the information forms, sent samples, and were then notified that we had become a finalist and would be pitching the buyers. This 3 month process culminated in mid July with our live presentation in Tampa. Everything went well and we should find out in late August or early September if we were chosen to be stocked. Only a third of those who entered the competition were chosen to present to the buyers so we are blessed to have had the opportunity.

Many of you have asked what happened to our sauces being stocked in local Tampa Bay Fresh Market locations. Well, nearly 100 local vendor products were cleared from inventory in April of this year. The Fresh Market sent a letter out telling us that they were ending their national direct-to-store local vendor program. It was a great fit while it lasted. In 6-1/2 months in 5 stores, E’s Best sold 56 cases of sauce and established a strong repeat customer base. All local products will have to re-apply through a regional distributor in order to re-qualify for shelf space. We do hope to be back with them on a larger scale some time in the future. Right now, we are focusing on our current 52 retailers and an opportunity to be distributed in as many as 50 Winn-Dixie stores from Tampa to Orlando. Please check out our retailer page on this website for alternative locations to get our sauces.

We have continually added new recipes to the E’s Best website this past year and will be looking for some of your favorites to share here as well. We are also planning a few more trips across the south to spread the word about our sauces and to get more retailers onboard. We have been blessed with the response and growth we have experienced during the last three years since launching our two sauces.

Recently, The Kamado Joe Cooking Channel featured a grilled swordfish recipe using our Smoky Mountain Finishing Sauce. It received a lot of play and we have continued to grow that relationship. We love our own Kamado Joe and the versatility it offers. You can see that video elsewhere on this website and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPzsVbxh7Js&feature=youtu.be.

We’ve been talking about releasing two rubs and have the test batches approved. We are in no hurry and will only introduce them when it is financially profitable to do so. Our focus has always been on making the products we already have as successful as possible. When the time is right, we will know it and will expand our product line. God has blessed us with the sauce first and foremost, then with the relationships with our retailers, and finally with the relationships with the people who buy and love our products. A little over three years down the road, we are continuing to grow and the sauces are growing ever more popular. We are indeed truly blessed and hope that you will taste and see that the Lord is good! Get your sauce on!

God has been the author of this journey and we cannot begin to express how our faith has grown through these last two years. Our perspective has changed as we have seen Him work, not in only our lives but in the lives of people He has reached through our sauce. Whether it be a new retailer we have met, someone who has sampled our sauces, friends who have referred us to retailers, our suppliers, or our social media posts, Jan and I can look back and see the tapestry of God’s hand in so many things.

Just last Saturday, we were at Southern Steer Butcher in Clearwater, FL. Greg Snyder will be celebrating his first year in business there in June and we plan to be there to celebrate with him. While we were there, a young lady came in, only interested in buying a sandwich at the deli counter. We asked her to sample our sauces and she did. She liked the sauce and asked where we were from. We told her Palmetto, FL and she said that she was getting ready to move to Palmetto. Jan then invited her to come attend our church, First Baptist of Palmetto. The young lady was elated, as she said she was looking for a Baptist church to join when she moved! Divine appointments have been the rule rather than the exception in our weekly tasting adventures and we have really had to adjust our prayer life to be ready for the unique ways God may use these opportunities to sell not only our sauce but to recognize the doors He opens so we can introduce Him to those we meet.

I don’t think that when we started this, we ever envisioned spending half a day every Saturday visiting retail locations and introducing our sauces to customers, but after our very first tasting at The Chop Shop in Bradenton on Memorial Day Saturday 2012, we realized the power of personal appearances and telling our story to others. Two years later, it never gets old. We enjoy sharing what God has done and IS doing in our lives. We enjoy seeing the overwhelming positive reactions to our products, and we truly enjoy the relationships we have developed with so many people, through the barbecue sauce. We will be back at The Chop Shop for our 2nd annual anniversary tasting event on Memorial Day Saturday, May 24.

There have been some incredible things taking place with E’s Best in the last couple of months. Some of these cannot be announced until things are locked in, but we can tell you that new products and new retail opportunities are right around the corner. We need your prayers for the right decisions, the right finances, the right timing, and the right processes as we move forward. We have seen God do things far beyond anything we could ever imagine and His timing is perfect. We rest in that and take every growth step as He provides the timing and the means to do so. He is at work even now and hopefully we can share some very good news very soon.

Thank you to everyone for your prayers of support. Thank you to every retailer, every single customer, every person who referred store locations to us, and every supplier for allowing us to continue to build the original dream to bottle our sauces into a reality that is far greater than we ever expected!

E’s Best,

E & Jan

January 31, 2014

Our apologies for not blogging more frequently during the last half of last year. Since our last update in June 2013, the number of locations carrying our sauces has increased to 50 retailers in 5 states!  We are learning a great deal halfway through our second year of doing this. We are getting a better handle on how quickly various retailers move our sauces. We also have made the commitment to feature at least one retailer every week and do a weekend tasting event at their location. We have developed in-store signage to promote our product displays, and we continue to ask for and receive prominent visibility in various store locations.

Our tastings are the best opportunity for us to get people to try our Smoky and Killer Finishing Sauces. We still post daily on Facebook but much of Facebook’s effectiveness in reaching our customers has diminished substantially since we debuted in May of 2012. Facebook has cut our customer reach by an estimated 80%. We benefitted from about 2 months of strong reach before Facebook instituted its vastly reduced reach limits. Our early posts used to reach a minimum of 200 to 300 people. Some posts reached 500 or more. That was with about 100 “likes.” Today, with 286 “likes.” we are lucky if we reach an average of 30 people per post.

As a result, we have had to rethink our communications strategies. We will continue to post on Facebook but in 2014, we will be utilizing Twitter more (@EsBestBarbecue), and we will be encouraging our followers to join our email newsletter list. We are also currently designing a Pinterest board for recipe swaps, etc. We will keep you posted when it is online. Meanwhile, click on this web page you’re reading and  join our email list.

A key focus last year and again this year, will be to cross promote our retailers’ special events. Last year we were in Cleveland Tennessee for Cooke’s Food Store’s Grillz Gone Wild event. We also worked with The Rolling Pin Kitchen Emporium last fall and participated at their station at the Tampa Wine and Food Festival. Chef Dave West incorporated our sauces into his menu and over 4000 people tasted our sauces. Two weekends ago we were at the Myakka Outpost at Myakka River State Park and participated in Florida FrostFest. The Outpost served their barbecue sandwiches with our Killer Sauce and we also had a sampling station there as well. In February, E’s Best Barbecue Sauces will be the focus of a Rolling Pin Culinary Center cooking class. As of this writing, only 3 seats remain for the event.

God has really opened many doors for us and we continue to rely upon Him as we chart our course for 2014. We recently introduced gallon containers of both sauces for commercial food prep. Many of our retailers serve prepared sandwiches and other dishes as part of their offerings, in addition to their retail products. We have only had these gallons available since our November 2013 bottling and we have already moved 25% of our gallon inventory. We want to give special thanks to Greg Snyder at Southern Steer Butcher in Clearwater, FL as he has really embraced our sauces. He uses our Killer to marinate sirloin tips for sale in his store and has really moved a ton of product in the 3 short months of being with us. In addition, The Rolling Pin, Myakka Outpost, Oneco Meats, Geier German Sausage Kitchen, and The Meat House in Charlotte, all have successfully incorporated gallon quantities for their commercial prep in the last 2 months. With the success of the gallons we continue to successfully move our 12 oz bottle cases as well. We are still looking to introduce a line of dry rub seasonings but only when the timing is right.

In 2014, we have several trips planned to visit our retailers in Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia. Last December during the ACC Football Championship weekend in Charlotte, we did tasting events at Reids Fine Foods and The Meat House. We also called on another prospective retailer who we hope to add in the coming barbecue season. We are still looking for independent retailers in Georgia and South Carolina. A couple of them we have contacted have expressed interest but there has been no firm commitment to date. We always welcome suggestions for an independent retailer where you live.

As we travel from store to store every weekend and call on retailers during the week, we constantly see God’s hand at work. Many times, we are the ones blessed by the customers and their witness to us. We look forward to every tasting, not just to move product for our retailers, but to have the opportunity to tell our story and let people know how God has blessed us. We may never know who we have impacted but we do know we are doing what God has called is to do. The barbecue sauce is just the means to God’s ends!

E’s Best!

May of this year marked the 1^st anniversary of our initial bottling and we really had a great month. Tampa Bay based Bay News 9 and ABC 28 Action News both did feature video news stories on us and those can be found by clicking the Media tab on this website. Thanks to Summer Smith and Brad Davis for two unique approaches to the E’s Best Barbecue adventure over the last year.

Our 1^st anniversary tasting event at The Chop Shop was a huge success. We saw many people who had become regular buyers of our sauces and many new customers as well. Chop Shop customer Terry West won the Gift Basket drawing at the end of the day. We sold nearly as much sauce on that day as we did at our first tasting exactly one year ago. It was a great day!

No sooner had we finished our anniversary promotions, when it was time to go out and find more retailers and plan our June road trip. Thanks to friend Sue Fox, we landed Buckland Farm Market in Warrenton, Virginia. We hope to personally visit and do a tasting there some time in July. Bart and Anela Culpepper introduced is to Steve Garrett, owner of 2 Piggly Wiggly stores in Troy, Alabama and he is now stocking our sauces in both stores! These additions bring our total locations to 40. We look back to a year ago and never would have imagined that we would have grown this fast. God is good!

Our recent road trip this month (June) was incredible. We headed to Troy Alabama, to deliver cases of sauce to the Piggly Wiggly stores and do a 2 hour tasting there before heading to Cleveland Tennessee and Cookes Food Store. In Troy, we met Piggly Wiggly owners Steve and Jennifer Garrett and our tasting was an overwhelming success, so much so that Steve purchased additional inventory before we left town. Bart, Anela and Nicole Culpepper were also able to stop by, which was a special time for us.

After the Troy tasting, we headed out for a 6 hour drive to Cleveland Tennessee. Barb and Dave Olson invited us to stay at their house overnight and we had a great visit. The next day, Saturday was the Grillz Gone Wild event at Cookes! Benji Widener from Cookes coordinated this event, which included the Holy Smoke barbecue team, E’s Best, Sannie Mae’s Heirloom Foods, and several other food vendors, plus an all day live remote from WCLE radio. We were interviewed live and people who heard our interview stopped by to meet us and sample our sauces. We had a great day and to top it off, we left Benji with another large restock before leaving town that afternoon. We then drove 3 hours to Waynesville, NC, for a much needed rest on Sunday. Thanks go out to the Powell family for their hospitality in Waynesville. Sunday morning we stopped by one of our retailers The Kitchen Shop, to say hello, and then had brunch at The Gateway Club. Then we chilled out the rest of the day.

Monday morning we headed back to Florida with a stop in Greenville, SC to meet with a prospective retailer. The meeting went very well and we hope to have some news to report in a week or two. We arrived back home Monday evening and thanked God for a safe and productive trip. Every time we do one of these trips, we always see God working both with and beyond our own plans. The people we met are the biggest memory from the trip. Thanks to Steve and Jennifer for adding our sauces to their Piggly Wiggly stores. From what we could tell, it looks like it will take off there. Also, thanks to Benji and Keith from Cookes who told us when we left that they consider us “family” and we feel the same about them. Building relationships has always been what this E’s Best Barbecue Sauce adventure has been about. We may not have known it when we first started, but we know it now beyond a shadow of a doubt. We appreciate every one of our retail partners and their customers. We appreciate those prospective retailers who have not said “yes” yet, and even those that have said “no.” We learn something from each person we meet.

We wrap up June 2013 thankful for God’s provision and His abundant blessings on our lives. We have much planned in July but we are always ready to change our plans when God steps in and reveals something new. So until next time, remember it’s the heart of barbecue season so “Get Your Sauce On!”

From Charlotte, we stopped in Waynesville, NC to visit Home Tech The Kitchen Shop on Main Street. It was great seeing owner Bob Lang again and our tasting on a Sunday afternoon was a success. The following Monday morning we headed for Cleveland, Tennessee and delivered a large quantity of cases to Cookes Food Stores. We hope to be back there in mid June for their Grills Gone Wild Barbecue event. We then had lunch with Barbara and Dave Olson and got on the road heading toward the Raleigh area.

Tuesday, we met Kelly Shatat, owner of Moon and Lola fashion jewelry, headquartered in Apex, NC, and she introduced us to Betty Buchanan, owner of Surcee Gifts, also in Apex. Betty decided that Surcee’s would be a great retail location for E’s Best and we agreed! Surcee will be doing a tasting at a large local event the weekend of May 5-7. Over 50,000 people are expected to come through this beautiful little “Mayberry-like” town. We then met our friend Anna Ver Steeg in Raleigh for lunch before heading to the Wilmington, NC area to visit our daughter Kristyn and Her husband Hudson, and to also do some prospecting there as well. In WIlmington, we picked up Pine Valley Market as a new retailer as we sampled sauces with co-owner Christi Ferretti.

As we traveled back to Florida later in the week, we received a call from Mark Weeden at The Meat House in WInter Park, FL, informing us that they would like to carry our sauces! So, it was a hectic but fun work trip and a very productive effort for E’s Best. We logged over 2500 miles in 6 days of travel to North Carolina and Tennessee.

Meanwhile back in Florida, we are getting ready to celebrate our 1^st complete year in business as E’s Best Barbecue, LLC. May 15 commemorates our very first bottling day and we will be celebrating by conducting a tasting on Memorial Day weekend at The Chop Shop in Bradenton, FL.

God continues to show us the way and we take everything one step at a time. We sense that some amazing things are going to take place this year but we will just be patient and see where God leads us. As we approach a year of doing this, neither Jan nor I could have predicted this time last year, how blessed we would be today. As of this writing, we have 37 retail partners and we are continuing to grow. Hopefully we will have some big news about another key retail partner soon. Thanks again to all of our retailers and all of you who have tried our sauce and keep coming back for more. We are truly humbled by what continues to take place with E’s Best!

God bless,

E & Jan

The new year 2013 is well underway and E’s Best continues to grow. We had a great Christmas season and thanks to all of our customers for such a huge response to our Facebook picture posts featuring Smoky and Killer used on a variety of holiday offerings! In some stores, existing product sold out as we were restocking with new inventory. God continues to bless us as we reach out to people through this remarkable venture!

The new year has gotten off to a great start and true barbecue season is still a couple of months away, but E’s Best users have been “getting their sauce on” with excellent recipes for indoor cooking during the winter months! With spring approaching, the call to the grill is getting louder and louder. Ah, I love the smell of charcoal embers in the evening!

Jan and I have continued to be busy virtually every weekend with sample tastings and we even had to enlist my daughter Katy, her husband Justin, and Katy’s Aunt Whitey on one weekend when we were out of town. As we grow our retailer base in Florida, we are planning a trip to the Carolinas and Tennessee to support our retailers there and hopefully bring on some new retail partners as well.

Since January 1, we have added 6 new retailers and we have another 5 that hopefully will firm up within a couple of weeks. We also had our 4^th bottling last month (February), so we are stocked up at least for the next couple of months unless something big breaks and we have to reorder. So to date, we now have 32 ongoing retailers in 4 southern states and we continue to have some in-store product remaining from our seasonal promotion with Bealls/Burkes Outlets, which covered 8 states during November and December of last year. We were overwhelmed by the customer response as 1/3 of the total inventory in the stores was sold without any advertising or promotional support other than our Facebook posts! Florida Bealls Outlet stores were extremely successful and some sold completely out. Of course, barbecue season never ends in the Sunshine State!

Entering our 10^th month in business, we have some things we are working on for the upcoming season. We are talking with a couple of larger retailers about bringing in E’s Best for a consistent presence on the shelves, and hope to have some news in the coming months, but our primary focus remains on smaller, local retail businesses. We have developed some great personal and business relationships with our retail partners and that is probably the most gratifying thing for us. We are all in the same boat. Local support is vital to the continued survival and success of the small retail business model. We welcome the continued opportunities to promote our sample tastings and bring people into these stores, who may not have come otherwise. Likewise, we benefit from the existing customer base of those businesses that otherwise, may never have had the opportunity to know about and buy our products. Every tasting we do is a success… for us and for our retailers.

For 2013, we are in the testing stages for two rubs to be added to our product line. We are not sure when these will be ready, but there is no rush, God’s timing is the only thing we are interested in and we will not push things before it is time.

For Fathers Day, we will soon be taking orders on our website for special E’s Best gift baskets, which include a bottle of Smoky, a bottle of Killer, a saucepan/basting brush combo, and a red grilling apron, stitched with our E’s Best logo. This will be a limited promotion and we will bring it back again if we get a good response.

A drawing to win one of these gift baskets will take place at the Chop Shop during Memorial Day weekend, celebrating E’s Best 1^st Anniversary in business. So, stay tuned as we get closer and check out our “E’s Best Barbecue Sauce” Facebook page for information about the date to start ordering the gift baskets, and be sure to click “like” to like our page.

In closing, we never lose sight of the amazing adventure that God has given us through, of all things, a barbecue sauce! His hand is all over this product! We have been able to give first fruits to fund Christian outreach through our church’s Faith Commitment ministry and that continues to be our point of focus through the sales of the sauce. E’s Best belongs to God and we stand in awe of His blessing and generosity in our lives.

Blessings to all of you who continue to support us, and our products!

E’s Best,

Elmer & Jan

Seasonings: E’s Best Finishing Sauce, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Cinnamon, Seasoned Salt, Dried Basil

For a number of reasons, I prefer buying fresh whole chicken wings and cutting them up. Fresh wings are usually a little less expensive, they have less water content than frozen wings, and most importantly, they taste better.

Season the bottom sides first with sprinkling of onion powder, garlic powder, and a dusting of cinnamon. (If you want hot wings from the start, sprinkle cayenne pepper on both sides of the wings.) Then spray the underside with cooking spray to adhere the seasonings. The final touch is a sprinkling of dried basil onto the oiled underside. Allow 30 seconds for the basil to begin sticking to the surface and spray lightly again with cooking spray to seal the basil to the surface. Spraying too close to the wings will scatter the dried seasonings. Turn wings over to the topside. Sprinkle seasoned salt only on one side (the top side of the two bone section). I have found that salting both sides is a bit much and overpowers the other seasonings. Repeat with the onion powder, garlic powder, and cinnamon. Lightly spray with cooking spray to adhere the seasonings and then sprinkle the basil or tarragon on the wings. No need to spray this side again as when these go on the grill, they will be placed as they are sitting on the cookie sheet.

When the grill is hot, apply some cooking oil to a grill brush or soaked paper towel in your tongs. Rub the oil onto the cooking grate. Chicken fat is volatile and flame up very easily when cooking wings. Low heat is the best way to go for minimal flame ups. Place the wings on the grill as they were on the cookie sheet (top side up). Cook for 10 minutes and then turn the wings over and cook for 10 minutes, watching carefully for flame ups. Turn the wings back to top side up and cook for another 10 minutes. 

At this point (20 minutes into the cook), coat the top side of the wings with E’s Best Finishing Sauce or Killer, whichever is your favorite.. Allow the sauce to caramelize for 5  minutes. Turn the wings over and coat the other side. Now they should be ready to serve!

Given the 2012 economy, who would be crazy enough to start a new business venture in a totally unfamiliar category from one’s 40 year career experience?

Uh, that would be me.

Has it worked? Absolutely! Why? We’ll get to that in a moment.

In January, 2012, I celebrated my 40th year in the television production/advertising & marketing field. My most recent work had been as a contract writer/producer for Raytheon since 2006. It was a full time free lance position that I had hoped would take me to retirement in 2016.

As ESPN’s Lee Corso would say, “Not so fast my friend!” Defense industry cutbacks hit communications at Raytheon NCS and my contract ended abruptly in April. In searching for new opportunities shortly thereafter, I want to thank Monster and Career Builder for confirming the minimal market demand for award-winning 61 year old writer/producers. Maintaining my positive attitude through many rejected applications was relatively easy because the way I saw it, I still had a lot of quality work to do, just not for them.

Now what? Our back burner dream to commercially bottle our own barbecue sauces became a reality because, well, the timing was perfect. So, after considerable prayer, my wife Jan and I launched E’s Best Barbecue, LLC in May of 2012. We had a business plan. We had a launch strategy. We had a target customer base, and we had what we thought was a great product. What we did not have were retailers lined up to sell our sauce. First, we had to bottle it in order to have samples, so we spent our money to launch realizing full well that we could have 100 cases of sauce sitting in our garage as our lasting legacy.

But that’s not what happened.

We started small and focused on independently owned retailers, where decisions to carry our products could be made and paid for on site. Our first bottling was on May 15. By June 27, we had 9 retailers in 3 states and ordered a second 100 case bottling.

By August 20, we had 19 retailers in 4 states and ordered a third bottling. All of this didn’t just happen. We relied upon friends in each state to assist us in introducing our products to retailers, who in turn, agreed to carry our sauces. We traveled throughout the southeast several times doing tastings and moving product.

By mid September we had 23 retailers and as we looked at what had taken place over just 4 months, we were very humbled. Then we got word that Bealls/Burkes Outlet wanted to begin carrying our sauces in the southeast, to see how they would fare. This opportunity increased our individual retail locations to 73 in 8 southern states!

So, how many barbecue sauces are there in the marketplace? Well, most people will tell you that the market is saturated already. In fact, at our first bottling, our bottling company told us that first timers like us may come back in a year, if at all. We’ve been there 3 times in 4 months and we are just beginning to scratch the surface of where we would like to be- national distribution in 4 years.

Some would say we are already successful and you can count me among those who believe that. But now that we have seen the popularity of our sauces across the south, we are confident that we will continue to grow this business to even greater heights with God’s help.

So back to the beginning of this blog, The Secret To Success Is…

Well, it’s not about how many bottles of sauce are sold or how many stores we have on our retailer list. Success comes as a result of God’s faithfulness, belief in our product, perserverance, and an amazing group of retailers and customers! But the Secret To Success is even more than that. It’s about going through each day thanking God for a fresh start, a new adventure, a new opportunity to engage people, to provide a product that gives enjoyment, and to share amazing stories like this one that could not have happened without the guidance and grace of God and His perfect timing.

The past 12 months are a true testimony that we are blessed!    -Elmer Hilker

“Taste and see that the Lord is good. -Psalm 34:8

Merry Christmas from E’s Best Barbecue, LLC!

www.ebestbarbecue.com

Just spent some time going back and looking at video footage of our first bottling in May. Hopefully we can share some of that footage with you soon. As 2012 approaches its conclusion, Jan and I look back on all that has taken place this year, and incredibly, we are more in awe today than we were when we saw our first bottles of Killer roll off the production line on May 15.

As 2012 began, I was starting my 6th year as a contract employee at Raytheon. Prior to 2008, the way things were going at the company, it looked like the Raytheon work would be my last stop before retirement in a few more years. The 2008 election changed everything and defense cutbacks eventually claimed my position and I was released from my contract in April of 2012. If that had not happened, we still would have been talking this Christmas season about “maybe” bottling our barbecue sauce in 2013, just like we have done every year around this time.

As it turned out, God had other plans for us. The story is still unfolding, but our lives have completely changed because we stepped out in faith in April 2012. We salted away a few dollars over the years from the opportunities we had been given to provide barbecue and sauce for family and corporate events. Jan and I had free lance advertising opportunities that also supplemented our salaries and we tucked some of those dollars away as well.

With my layoff and sudden loss of anticipated income, we could either use those dollars to pay our upcoming bills, or trust God for His provision for the bills, and use these monies for the original purpose, to launch our barbecue sauce. With much prayer and prompting from Jan, Kristyn, Katy, Justin, and Hudson, we took the leap. All of a sudden my mindset had to change from producing and writing videos to selling our own consumer product, an unproven one no less, in the greater marketplace.

Make no mistake, it has been a challenging year financially, but God met every bill, free lance work from my old company Raytheon and a few others, began to come in, and we made it through this year. Best of all, we were able to use the seed money to take care of every aspect of the launch; the legals fees, trademark application, bottle label printing, product testing, and the first bottling. It helped tremendously that we were able to design our own logo, label art, business cards, sell sheets, and other promotional materials in-house. We are also so grateful to Steve Gambill for warehousing our inventory. As the launch approached, we wrote and sent out our own press releases and as a result we launched on Memorial Day weekend with 2 wonderful local articles in The Bradenton Herald by Josh Salman and The Bradenton Times by Dennis Maley.

A lot took place between April 7 and Memorial Day weekend at the end of May. But God opened doors for us and the first ones were Hollingsworth Cabinetry in Wilmington- Kristyn’s in-laws Bob & Elise Hollingsworth, and our good friends at The Palmetto Meat Shop, Roger Talbot and his great family. They were the first to stock our sauces on their shelves and they contacted the people at The Chop Shop on our behalf. I met with Susan Ambrose of The Chop Shop, who would not commit to carrying the sauces but did offer to let us do a tasting on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend to see how it would go.

God’s timing was perfect. we promoted the tasting on Facebook and the turnout was amazing. We moved 6 cases of sauce that day! It was the most successful tasting ever in the history of The Chop Shop, and they have moved more sauce to date than anyone else. On Tuesday after Memorial Day, Come See Come Sav began carrying our sauces. Then the articles came out on June 2 and there was a run on the supply of all three of our retailers. We ware sitting by the pool the following Saturday and we had phone calls from The Chop Shop that they were running out of stock. We also resupplied Palmetto Meat Shop and Come See Come Sav. Our family was overwhelmed at the initial response!

A family trip to Waynesville in June with Steve and Teresa Gambill turned into an E’s Best trip. We stopped in Charlotte and met with our friend Tonda Bynum, who took 8 cases to resell. Tim and Radawn Elmore also took some sauce to get things going where they lived in S.C. In Waynesville, we went to Home Tech the Kitchen Shop on Main Street and they came on board and we did a successful tasting with them. Coates Produce at the Asheville Farmers Market also agreed to stock our sauces.

When we returned home, Anna Maria Olive Oil Outpost, Apollo Meats in Apollo Beach, and D&K Ace Hardware in Ellenton came on board before the end of June. Amazingly, we had run out of inventory and we did our second bottling of sauce on June 27. July started with Felton’s Grocery in Plant City joining us and we did another successful tasting at the Chop Shop for July 4th. Over that holiday, the Gambills were back in Waynesville and Home Tech was doing their own tasting of our sauces. Meanwhile, Dave and Barbara Olson opened the door for us a Cookes Grocery in Cleveland Tennessee.

In mid July, it was already time for another E’s Best road trip to the Carolinas and Tennessee. On my way up, The Elmores restocked in SC, and then I traveled to Cleveland, TN and the Olsons introduced me to the folks at Cookes and they took enough stock to last them until October, when Jan and I visited them again for a tasting. I then traveled to Waynesville, restocked Home Tech, and Maggie Country Store also came on board. I traveled back through Asheville and Jarvis Produce at The Asheville Farmers Market agreed to stock our sauces. Then I stopped in Charlotte to restock Tonda’s supply, and she and I visited a number of retailers. Before leaving for home, Fat Boy Produce became our first Charlotte retailer. Once I got home, Tonda had closed the deal with Clean Catch Fish Market and The Meat House. She has been doing tastings at both locations on a regular basis.

Once home, Catch A Fire at the Red Barn Flea Market became an E’s Best retailer, and we continued to do tastings. Rice’s TV & Appliances and Island Fresh Market on Anna Maria Island became new retailers as well in July. With barbecue season in full swing, our retailers were really selling our sauce and we had to do our third bottling on August 20!

As fall rolled around, Polka Dot Press in Tallahassee joined us in September through the efforts of the Fernald family, and both locations of Crowder Bros in Bradenton also came on board. In the middle of September, we heard back from samples we had left a month ago with people at Bealls Outlet. We were really blown away when they said they wanted to do a test run in 50 stores throughout the south. This was a huge opportunity for us and with it came the standard methods the large chains use to organize, ship, and distribute product. We had quite a learning curve, but it was a great experience to get a full understanding of how big box stores operate and keep track of inventory. It was a lot of work but we are better for the experience and grateful that they took interest in our products. With the addition of the Bealls/Burkes Outlet stores, we are in 73 locations in 8 southern states. God is Good!

So, it has been a whirlwind 9 months since the Raytheon layoff until now. God has been awesome and His network is responsible for the success we have had to date. As we prepare for the new year, we will remain humble, still focus on small business owners, and welcome opportunities from large store chains as well. Of course, there were those we visited who chose not to carry our products, but we met some very nice people along the way who left the door open for future consideration. We never thought about batting 1000, but I must say, all in all, we were pretty close!

Jan and I praise God and thank all of you who have supported us and our retailers, have read our Facebook posts, made comments, liked our page, or just read about us. We thank you for your prayers and we look forward to exciting adventures in 2013. Thank you all and may God richly bless you now and in the coming year!

Merry Christmas and E’s Best to you!

Elmer & Jan

The last two weeks have been somewhat of a blur but very successful for E’s Best Barbecue! We started with a tasting on October 13 to help The Chop Shop in Bradenton celebrate their 41st anniversary. One week before, Tonda Bynum was at The Meat House in Charlotte and had a very successful day as well. Before leaving for Tennessee and North Carolina, we had the opportunity to get all of the shipping prep done for our newest retailer, Bealls Outlet and Burkes Outlet stores. We had been having ongoing discussions with their buyer about the possibility of carrying our products. We were informed in early September that they wanted to stock our sauces, but we held off from making an announcement until it was official this week with the actual shipment.  The first order was substantial and required a lot of shipping prep work that we had to learn about quickly, but the experience has prepared us for similar large shipments for other large retailers in the future. Meanwhile, we delivered our first shipment to Shannon O’Brien and Graham Bergquist at O’Brien Family Farms in Bradenton. We had called on them at the end of last season before they closed for the summer and we are excited to be in their store. We will be doing a tasting there on Saturday, December 1.

We traveled to Cleveland, Tennessee on Wednesday, Oct. 17 and thanks to Dave and Barbara Olson for letting us stay with them that night. Our tasting was all day at Cookes Food Store on Thursday for their quarterly Truckload Meat Sale. The sauces were reasonably priced and we moved a lot for the store that day and met a lot of wonderful people from that part of Tennessee! Thanks to Benji Widener and the staff!

From there, we traveled to Waynesville, NC for a Saturday tasting at Home Tech The Kitchen Shop, the anchor store on Waynesville’s famous Main Street. That weekend was the Apple Festival and their store was packed that Saturday! Thanks to owners Bob and Wendy Lang!

Thanks so much also to our friends the Gambills for letting us stay with them. We hit the road Sunday morning for Florida and we are back at work letting people know about our sauces and refilling supplies to our Florida retailers. This weekend we will be at Crowder Brothers Ace Hardware on Manatee Avenue in Bradenton from 10am to 2pm as part of a big grilling event at that location. We hope our local friends will come out and say hello!

When we look back on the last 5 months, we really stand in awe of what God has done in our lives with this opportunity. The barbecue sauce business is saturated and to the trained retailer, there is no explanation for the success we have had standing out from the crowd and experiencing so many people appreciating our products. There have been a few retailers that played it safe and chose not to carry our sauces, and that is to be expected. But those that took a chance on us have a witness we could never have authored ourselves. God continues to bless our sauces! Your prayers and support are evident and much valued by Jan and me. Thank you!

E’s Best!