Transcript

Brandon: We're in almost all major grocery stores, well we are in every major grocery store in the Charleston area. 

VO: There are vendors that do it as a hobby and then there are serious business owners. 

Brandon: My name is Brandon Close. I own Chipper Dog Barbecue. We sell barbecue sauces and rubs. We do, you know, I wish I would have kept a count of how many events we did last year. You know, it was at least 150 probably. That's the journey that got us to where we are. And when I say us it's me, you know, my wife helps me a lot. My daughters help me a lot. 

We launched with our mustard-based barbecue sauce. Here in South Carolina from Charleston to the Columbia area down to about the Georgia border, that's home territory for mustard sauce. It's now expanded. Georgia, you know, is really big into mustard sauce. I'm sure it's creeping down into Florida a little bit. You know with the way that barbecue has blown up in the last five or ten years. I would say it's definitely become more known. We ran with that strictly for about a year built a brand off that and that's all of our color schemes and palettes and all that. 

We launched in April 2020. We got our first product in October of 2020 and then around Labor Day of 21’ is when we launched our red sauce and shortly after that our dry rub.

VO: Every good product needs a hook Brandon chose one that works for buyers and keeps him motivated as well.

Brandon: It was Chipper Dog BBQ. My original dog was named Chipper. He was an Old English Bulldog. He passed last June, June of 2022. He was 12 years old. He had a good run. But yeah, so he was 10 when I named the company. People always ask me why. I don't I don't know. It was never even a question when it became time to name it. We care about the brand and now even more you know, it's the only not the only thing, but it's a big part of him that's left over. I see his face every day when I go to set up at markets and pull bottles out and all that kind of stuff, but I cared about him so much that it helps me care about the brand even more than I would you know. Which is funny but you know, we're also full of dog puns, you know. Our Old Yellow Sauce, our Old Red Sauce. Our rub is Legs Shaking Rub. Our tagline is Dog Gone Good. We have the picture of the dog on the bottle. It really helps. It definitely helps with connection. It definitely helps when it's on the shelf, people at least look at it. You know, I mean, our branding has been great. Like I said, we had a local artist draw our label she did a fantastic job. It really stands out.

VO: But success takes more than good branding. It takes hard work and a good strategy, and of course, a great product. 

Brandon: This past year we did a lot of events in North Carolina. They have a lot of barbecue festivals up there where South Carolina doesn't have as many. But we won best mustard sauce in North Carolina last year, which was great. It was awesome. That was really cool. We do a two-pronged approach. We do wholesale. We're in about 200 stores across the southeast, including Publix, Harris Teeter, Lowes Foods, and then a lot of like Regional or smaller. Gift shops and, you know, specialty stores, coffee shops, wine bars, that kind of thing. And then we do the direct-to-consumer sales also with those, like I said, 150ish events a year. We started out with smaller farmer’s markets. This year our focus is definitely on more regional events, you know, traveling two to three hours away, doing those bigger festivals. We're in almost all major grocery stores, well we are in every major grocery store in the Charleston area. So for us to go and do a farmer's market, we're seeing our numbers to decline at the farmer's market because people can pick them up at the grocery stores here. But if we go do a festival in Raleigh-Durham area, we have much more success because we're not available in as many stores that are up that way. It helps expand our area and then it brings on more wholesale accounts when we do that too. 

VO: So even with wholesale success Brandon still has no plans for moving away from in-person sales at events. Partly because they're just fun.

Brandon:  I like, you know, that initial reaction, especially when they haven't tried a mustard sauce or maybe even when they have tried a mustard sauce. And my favorite thing probably is when people are like “I don't like mustard,” but their spouse does so they try it. They're like, “oh that's really good here. You got to try it” and they end up liking it. I love that. That's probably my favorite thing. 

VO: So if you're around the Carolinas and ready to impress with proven vendors, reach out to Brandon for barbecue sauces and rubs that are proven winners.