Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Gray, Patricia B

Titel

Spicing Up Sales

Ist Teil von

• FSB : fortune small business, 2008-12, Vol.18 (10), p.45

Ort / Verlag

New York: Time Incorporated

Erscheinungsjahr

2008

Quelle

EBSCOhost Business Source Ultimate

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• An investment banker by trade and an opportunist by nature, Alen Smith took the secret family recipe, bottled it and boldly named it Texas Best. For three years, he carted cases of the sauce around in the back of his station wagon, ladling out samples for shoppers and chefs in stores and restaurants all over the South. By 1978, Smith's sauce had won fans from Miami to Boston. Later that year, when food conglomerate Romanoff International offered him a seven-figure check for his tiny business, Smith cashed out. Almost as soon as the ink was dry on the contract, he regretted his decision. Now he's getting a second chance to run his sauce business. Smith, 66, and his son Reed, 38, recently negotiated a deal to buy back Texas Best from T Marzetti in Columbus, Ohio, the company that had acquired the sauce from the Smiths' original buyer in the early 1990s. Reed and his dad plan to relaunch the brand nationally in supermarkets and specialty stores. Although the Smiths are cagey about numbers, they're planning on putting several hundred thousand dollars into the campaign. They've found a Louisiana manufacturer to undertake the time-consuming task of making the sauce. To help resurrect this family business, FSB recruited three experts.