News
Macon’s Mrs. Griffin’s barbecue sauce spreading to more Sam’s Clubs
Apr
Mrs. Griffin’s, the Macon- and mustard-based barbecue sauce, is expanding its market, with Sam’s Club adding it to eight new stores, including three in Florida.
“For a small business like us, this is huge,” said owner Roland Neel.
Mrs. Griffin’s shipped its first pallets of the sauce to the new Sam’s locations Wednesday afternoon. The Florida locations are Pensacola, Panama City and Tallahassee.
“We had some distribution down there (Florida), but never through something like a Sam’s Club,” Neel said.
The new Georgia stores include Sam’s sites in Augusta, Savannah, Pooler, Morrow and Peachtree City. The sauce is also carried at Sam’s stores in Macon, Albany, Valdosta and McDonough.
“When I first bought the company about two years ago, we were in one — Macon,” Neel said.
Mrs. Griffin’s has been made in Macon for more than 75 years. It’s carried on the shelves in Kroger, Ingles, Food Lion, Wal-Mart, Harvey’s and other grocers from just south of Atlanta to Florida.
Neel said the company has done research that shows Mrs. Griffin’s is the third-oldest commercially sold barbecue sauce in the country.
“We’re the oldest in the South, where barbecue sauce really matters,” Neel said.
The barbecue sauce is said to have gotten its start at the annual Griffin family Fourth of July picnics, where M.E. Griffin’s recipe was so good that word of it spread and he was asked to start selling the sauce. He named it after his wife, Etta, and began mixing it up in a 5-gallon milk churn in the kitchen of their Second Street home.
His brother ran a grocery store in Warner Robins and put some of the sauce on the shelves. It sold out quickly. Soon, the hand-and-funnel method of bottling the product could not keep up with demand. Griffin bought an automated bottling machine and started manufacturing 2,400 gallons a week in an 800-gallon stainless steel tank.
