This story was originally published by The Macon Melody.
Mrs. Griffin’s Barbeque Sauce, the oldest continually made barbecue sauce in America, is bottled in Macon and packaged at a 12,000-square-foot facility on Roff Avenue.
The tangy orange-y hued sauce is mixed in big vats before being pumped into bottles, capped and labeled. In a single shift, the Mrs. Griffin’s assembly line pumps out 10,000 to 15,000 vials of barbecue sauce.
Owner Roland Neel bought the company 15 years ago, and the sauce is made the same way it’s always been.
“It’s a very special identity to have,” Neel said. “They call me Mr. Griffin at the post office.”
Credit: Jason Vorhees
Credit: Jason Vorhees
But Neel isn’t the actual Mr. Griffin. Mangham Griffin married his family’s mustard-based sauce from Columbia, South Carolina with a more tomato-based sauce in Macon.
The Griffins started selling the sauce in their grocery store on Houston Avenue around the Great Depression and it took off.
Neel hasn’t tweaked much. He’s upgraded some of the equipment and started buying his vinegar in higher concentrations. The pH of the sauce is kept at around 3.6, as both a safety measure and determinant of quality.
“There’s no artificial dyes or colorations in Mrs. Griffin’s, so what you see is what you get,” Neel said.
Mrs. Griffin’s can be found in stores from Macon down to Gainesville, Florida, and the sauce is used in restaurants throughout Georgia.
The flavors include original, hickory smoked and sweet.
Neel, a businessman by trade, loves to talk about the number of clever tactics the brand uses to increase sales, like the “dogbone” or two-for-one packs.
Recently, the sauce reached shelves in Walmarts around the nation in the form of four-ounce “dollar bottles.”
“They all [other sauces] had a little two-ounce dollar bottle, and I went and stared at that rack on Zebulon Road,” he said. “But it came to me … somebody trying to make ends meet, are they gonna buy two ounces or four ounces?”
Neel takes pride in competing with national barbecue sauce brands which tend to be more of the “sweet red sauces” that are more associated with barbeque styles out west. The sauce stands out for not only its color, but its tangy flavor profile. It is also much cheaper than its neighbors on the sauce rack, Neel said, since everything is made in one location.
“It’s a great barbeque sauce,” he said. “It’s something different, it’s low sugar and I think it’s priced right.”
Before jumping into the barbeque sauce business, Neel and his family owned the Neel Department Store in downtown Macon, which holds the Guinness World Record for world’s most durable advertiser. Neel is the fifth generation of the family that opened the store nearly 107 years ago. The department store closed last December.
He said he feels very fortunate that the sauce has a loyal fanbase, a small one, but nonetheless one that supports the sauce in grocery stores around the region.
In its 90th year, Neel hopes Mrs. Griffin’s will be able to find someone to take up the mantle and carry the brand onto its 100th anniversary.
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