Game Day Specials

Look for our new packaging at Fairplay, Food 4 Less, Walmarts, Woodman’s and a few other stores.  We have gone through some needed production upgrades to meet the popular demand for our product.  First you will notice the new look to our packaging, including a resealable bag.  When you get home and open them, you will see they are all pretty much uniform.  Love Me Tenders are now made from whole chicken tenderloins; a more uniform serving compared to a chicken strip.   One thing you won’t see is the state of art production facilities that now make our product to a very high standard.

Pulled Pork

We have had such great comments abut our BBQ Sauce, we tried a hand Pulled Pork with BBQ Sauce. It is sold as food service only right now, might come out retail in the fall of 2010.

Turkey Burgers

We were fortunate to get our Turkey Burgers into a major league outfit this year.  Once the food service manager tried it o get him to try it, he liked it.  They serve a half pound turkey burger without our name on it.  Some times you have to slip into the background the first year you bring out a new item.  The turkey burgers are in retail stores, we are now working on turkey sliders and half pounders for food service.

I went to see how they served the turkey burger and could hardly see it on the sign, the fonts were half the size of all the other products and we were the most expensive sandwich on the board.  I have to say, they did an excellent job serving it.

Love Me Tenders

I spend a lot of time working on Love Me Tenders, a fairly new company that focuses on food for Game Day. Our number one product is a breaded chicken tenderloin fritter.

ALBBQ_SWEET&SPICY PorkLinks

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ALBBQ_SWEET&SPICY PorkLinks
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Plan Your Weekend Getaway!

Pretty simple.  Prepare your bbq to the state your going to BBQ it and make a beeline to the BBQ.  Once, twice, 3 times or more.

Building a New BBQ Line

America Loves BBQ, that’s a fact. When you look at this blog titled America Loves BBQ and see the logo, you might think this is another site all about how to cook BBQ. If that is the case, you are only partially right. This site is about BBQ, but more so, how a guy dreams of a branded line of BBQ products and goes about trying to make it happen.  From talking about it, trying to figure out what it takes, doing something,  to getting the message out.   The following is some of the things I go through to make my dream grow up in smoke!

With 7 generations in the meat business, its no wonder I would up in the meat business. And everyone at the meat company I worked at loved BBQ. Throw in what I saw delivering to BBQ Drive-ins and I’ve seen a whole lot of people BBQn.  From pits, which charcoal or wood, chips, spices, the food being cooked, the way it is served, side dishes and so on, I have a lot of memories.  The world loves talking about BBQ almost as much as they like eating it.   When you see the America Loves BBQ logo, you will know what company those products belong to.

All my products have a few things in common: BBQ Sauce and their taste profile are all similar.  In addition to that, they are relative easy to prepare, additional spices or flavors can be used to satisfy a specific taste and different garnishes can stretch the budget.  My thoughts and progress on how I come up with products, labels and the marketing I use to compete in one of the most popular categories in the grocery store come from everywhere.  The competition selling BBQ Sauce comes from corporate America to other independents like myself armed with just a dream, struggling to get on a shelf and then faced with the reality of getting shoppers to try it.

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America Loves BBQ, when I say it to someone for the first time, I usually get a nod, a smile, a comment about BBQ; no one has said anything negative except they can’t get enough!  The America Loves BBQ logo probable went through 25 revisions to just get to where it is now.  Everything I do is fair game for making it better, more useful or whatever.  I usually will revisit my efforts and over time, try to improve them.  I strongly believe if it is if worth doing, it is worth starting.

America Loves BBQ, the logo, this is the “first final version”.

It looked to me that it will need a lot of BBQ to spread around under this brand name.

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My family has been a great inspiration and help over the years during BBQ Time. I wound up president of  a Chicago meat company for 30 plus years and could always count on my kids to help out on summer holidays as each of our stores were neighborhood happenings at that time.   I thought it was necessary to close early on each summer BBQ holiday so employees and myself could get home to BBQ or to enjoy someone else’s BBQ efforts.  At my house, you didn’t have to call anyone twice to the table.

From the family helping out at work, talking BBQ all day to the holiday meal itself, everyone had their own great feedback at our holiday BBQ’s.  My wife did all the BBQ’n at our house because the kids and myself worked right up to the holiday itself.  The whole family learned quickly what kind of BBQ customers were looking for and would buy, not just sample, but buy!  I left the meat company in 2006 to try my hand at something different.

The first thing I would up doing was creating a branded line of chicken called Love Me Tenders.

www.LoveMeTenders.com

But that’s a different story, this is about working on America Loves BBQ.

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America Loves BBQ

The first product at America Loves BBQ we worked on was our BBQ Sauce.  BBQ Sauce is a very, very competitive category and not exactly very easy to enter.  Most grocers do not want another sauce for the shelf, it just splits their sales into more facings.

But BBQ Sauce we worked on.  It took about 6 months to find our taste profile.  When thenutritional information came in, we were not happy so we changed the formula somewhat.   As we passed it around to friends and businesses for comments, it was obvious we would stick with it.   That BBQ Sauce became our first product and the company’s taste profile, however we still needed to name it.  This proved to be a much harder task then coming up with the taste profile for the sauce.

The name alone stumped us, America Loves BBQ “BBQ Sauce” or maybe America Loves BBQ “Love Sauce,” America Loves BBQ, BBQ Sauce For BBQ Lovers.  We went through lists and lists of names, finally I thought we should start the art work for the BBQ Sauce label hoping the colors, the fonts might give us a clue or just lead us to a name.  But, we went through about 15 label looks and settled on a look without the final name.

The picture below was taken at a rib cooking contest in 1986.  My family knew their BBQ, but they were not judges.  They did have a lot to say about what ever they tasted that day.

The above pictures show you how we named our sauce.  The thoughts that brought the name to be came to me while I was thinking about Labor Day 2007.  I was wondering if we were all going to be around to BBQ since my life did not revolve around working the BBQ holidays anymore.  I didn’t know if all my kids would be around, but sure, Merle will BBQ, its like a family tradition. Yes! Family Tradition; we were throwing out all sorts of different names for our BBQ Sauce, I used “Family Tradition” as a place holder.

This was a logo I pictured in store windows one night.  I called my artist and he put it into action.  My dream is to see it in a few restaurants serving some of our products, grocery stores, on food service trucks one day.  Why not, better than in my closet, gathering dust.

Saturday February 14

First week of February, a great week.  We are in the final stage of testing out the turkey burger.  At first, I was looking for an all white meat seasoned turkey burger with BBQ Sauce. Each taste test we did came out too dry, we kept adding more sauce, less sauce, a bbq rub and finally just about started over after about 19 recipes.  We added the onions and cooked it, just about perfect.

America Loves BBQ Family Tradition Turkey Burgers were finally right on the our 23rd batch.  At this point we decided to make 2 ounce square sliders and half pound burgers for food service, quarter pound burgers for retail packages to begin with.

<img

src=”http://americalovesbbq.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/the-mini-turkey-burger-the-new-frontier.jpg” alt=”the-mini-turkey-burger-the-new-frontier” title=”the-mini-turkey-burger-the-new-frontier” width=”450″ height=”300″ class=”aligncenter size-full wp-image-162″ />

I barbequed these burgers last night in Area 48 out West, our winter bbq testing grounds. I could give you my opinion, but I want you to be the judge!

This box started out red, white and blue, 7-8 layouts later, the color started to change to represent some turkey.  This was just about our next to last layout, the final should be in grocer stores by April 10th or so.

Friday, February 13

In October, a food service operator asked me if I had a pulled pork, so I told him I would bring him something.  I saw a difference in the cuts of pork used, the way it is pulled, cooked and how the sauce is mixed in. I talked to some pulled pork lovers and listened intently to what they said.

America Loves BBQ pulled pork is all about the flavor of the BBQ Sauce and the way the pork is pulled and served on a bun. I can’t really say how good it is, but Cub fans can decide for themselves what they think of our pulled pork.  I am also not going to say our BBQ Sauce is better than this one, better than that, because the reason clothing, art, food, politics, etc are so interesting is because everyone has his/her own opinion and not afraid to share it. I prefer to hear what others say about our products.  But before I make any changes, I would like to check out their living room wardrobe and other foods they like before I would change anything over one comment.

Meanwhile, we were also working on a Super Sassy Turkey Sausage.  Progress went a little smoother on the sausage after what we learned from the turkey burger.  After about 13 recipes, we were going around and around with USDA labeling compliance about the various elements on the label and if it is a sausage style link or just a plain old sausage.  It qualifies to be considered a USDA LEAN SAUSAGE.  I’m interested to see how it is received across the different markets.  Like all our other products, it has the same taste profile as our Family Tradition BBQ Sauce .

Here are a couple shots I took in the end of March.  America Loves BBQ is all about America from Coast to Coast and BBQ.  While spending a few months in Area 48 in the desert, this gal looked like a young movie star I used to see on the big screen when I was younger.  She graciously allowed me to “shoot a little piece about America Loves BBQ” in her backyard.  When you see the final edited  piece you will what happens in one take, live action,  an unscripted piece like all my short spots that belongs on BBQOOGLE Tube somewhere.