How We Turned Barbecue Sauce Into a Bigger Business

When I joined my dad’s business, he had already built something solid.

Rivertown Foods made private label barbecue sauce for meat markets, butcher shops, grocery stores and barbecue restaurants. We made the sauce. They put their names on it.

It was steady, repeat business with very little competition. But we already had almost every likely account in St. Louis and many throughout Missouri.

My job was to figure out where the next growth would come from.

I started by calling on the few accounts we didn’t have. We picked up some business. Then we added more flavors and offered them to our existing customers. Our Kansas City style sauce became our number one seller.

We listened to customers who wanted dressings, marinades and spices. We tried products that fit the trends at the time. We expanded into other regions and hired a salesperson to help.

These were reasonable ways to grow, and several worked. But I kept looking for an opportunity with more room.

One of the best clues came from the business we were already doing.

I studied our private label accounts and noticed that some customers sold much more sauce than others—even when the products were similar.

They weren’t necessarily advertising or discounting. People simply knew their names and liked their businesses.

That mattered as we considered launching a brand of our own. Rivertown Foods meant something to our customers, but very little to the shopper standing in a grocery aisle.

We could make a good product. Getting people to choose it was another question.

I partnered with a barbecue restaurant that had a strong name. The sauce did well. That gave me confidence that we could build business around a reputation people already recognized.

Then I stepped back and looked at what else we could do.

What could we make with our equipment and people? What ingredients did we already buy? What would fit our process, sell beyond barbecue season and bring customers back regularly?

We explored hot sauce. It had a lot going for it: popular, easy to ship and relatively easy for us to make. But the market was crowded, and people could keep a bottle around for a long time.

Pasta sauce looked more promising.

Tomatoes were already a major ingredient in our business. We had the equipment and packaging capabilities. And our facility was right around the corner from the Hill, St. Louis’s Italian neighborhood.

We also had relationships there.

With help from customers and friends, we developed recipes and tested them in nearby Italian grocery stores. Those early tests gave us a practical way to learn before going further.

The sauce sold. People came back for more. It fit our production process and helped balance the seasonality of barbecue sauce.

There was another simple advantage: people often used the whole jar to make dinner.

Now we had a promising product. We still needed a reason for people to pick it up.

We explored licensing a restaurant name, but ran into hurdles. Then we started thinking about the Hill itself.

People already knew it. They associated it with Italian food, neighborhood markets and favorite restaurants. We had been making food right around the corner for years and had longstanding relationships in the neighborhood.

We landed on Taste of the Hill.

We started in the Hill’s markets, where we could see how customers responded. Then we took the product to Schnucks, Dierbergs, Straub’s and other local grocers. Eventually, we got into Walmart and Sam’s Club in Missouri and expanded throughout the state.

Within five years, Taste of the Hill became Rivertown Foods’ biggest-selling product line.

Looking back, the opportunity was in how the pieces fit together.

We had manufacturing capabilities we could use more fully. Pasta sauce gave us repeat purchases and less dependence on barbecue season. The Hill gave us a name and identity customers already understood. Our relationships gave us places to test it and a starting point for distribution.

My work was to recognize those connections, test the possibilities and keep pursuing the business as it took shape.

That’s how I approach business development. I look at what a company already does well, what customers are showing us and where those strengths could create another source of revenue. Then I work alongside the owner to develop it and bring it to market.

Many owners see possibilities like these. What they often need is someone who can give them sustained attention and do the work to move them forward.

My dad had built a good business. I helped find, develop and pursue a new way to grow it.

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I help business owners develop what’s next. If something here sparks an idea or conversation, I’d enjoy hearing from you.