Two hefty men are cruising past the seafood counter at Byerly’s, a recently opened luxury supermarket in Highland Park, when they hear a voice calling out to them.
“Oh sir, you’re in for some fun–as much fun as you’ve ever known,” Sanders tells him.
Sanders chides another lady, “Why, you’ve been listening to everything I’ve been saying. You just can’t be at Byerly’s today if you pass by this table. All you have to do is come over for a taste.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The woman obliges, but her male companion plops a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s, one of Sanders’s prime competitors, into their cart.
“Well, that would knock you out of the running,” he says.
Sheets translated the Sanderses’ sauce recipe from volume to weight measurements, crucial for bulk production, and fiddled with the ingredients. Real raisins were replaced by raisin paste and ketchup by tomato paste, water, sugar, and a strong vinegar. “Fresh onions, which Jeff had been using, are uneven in taste,” says Sheets. “They’re fine in the spring, but come fall they’re harsh and tart. So as insurance we went to dehydrated onions.” Sheets also pressed for more potent spices.
The Sanders brothers had meanwhile been angling for new investors. “We have a great barbecue sauce,” Jeff had told Mike Nasatir, a commodities trader and family friend, in 1991. Nasatir had his doubts, but eventually he and his wife agreed to pump “several hundred thousand dollars” into the enterprise if Steve and Jeff would leave their jobs to devote all their time to the sauce.
