THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 14, 1996 TAG: 9603150657
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover story
SOURCE: BY DAWSON MILLS, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Long : 178 lines
TERRY AND LYNN Grape of Ocean View hope to make Norfolk the do-it-yourself barbecue capital of the world.
The secret is in the sauce.
After running a part-time catering business specializing in pig roasts since the early '80s and hearing comments such as, ``You really should bottle that sauce,'' Terry, 47, is going into the sauce business, well, whole hog.
He has put in for early retirement from the Naval Aviation Depot, which is moving to Jacksonville, Fla., to stay in Hampton Roads and devote himself to the sauce business full time.
His sister, Lynn, 48, an industrial quality assurance manager, has quit a salaried corporate job to bring her managerial expertise to the enterprise.
``I'm confident we can do it, but it's been quite a learning experience,'' Lynn says.
Robert Larrabee of Ghent had his wedding party catered by Terry last September. A barbecue gourmet and amateur cook himself, Larrabee has high praise for Terry's culinary skills and his sauces in particular.
``It is without comparison,'' Larrabee says. ``It's the best I've ever had. I grew up on Texas barbecue and thought it was the best until I tried Terry's. I've tasted barbecue from Texas, North Carolina, Arkansas. It's all different, all good. No, it's wonderful. But his sauce is head and shoulders above the rest. There's nothing like it.''
Despite a serious misstep in their first attempt to bring their products to market, the Grapes, both neophytes at the retail food-service business, already have about 6,500 bottles of their three sauces - original barbecue, special barbecue, and limenaise - ready to sell. It has begun to appear in stores locally and turned up in holiday gift baskets in Hampton Roads and the Grapes' hometown in Nebraska.
They've selected the name ``Bosse Hogge'' for their enterprise. Lynn is president, and Terry is vice president. Their labels feature a readily recognizable drawing of Terry, complete with glasses, astride a motorcycle. Behind him is a woman, whom they identify as Grandma Grape, the matriarch of Grape family cooking, having been a cook for the Union Pacific Railroad.
There's no pig on the label, Terry explains, because the special sauce is for beef and the limenaise for seafood. So why ``Bosse Hogge?''
``At my very first pig roast,'' Terry recalls, ``someone came up to me and said, `Boss hog!' That was when `boss' was used to describe anything good. The name kind of stuck, and I've used it ever since.''
The Navy brought Terry to Norfolk. Getting out in 1974, he went to work for what was then the Naval Air Rework Facility two months later. He has stayed ever since.
``I was living with two other guys, and we decided to have a pig roast, to cook our own,'' Terry says. ``I'd been cooking since I was in the Boy Scouts, when I was 10 or 11 years old, in Nebraska. We borrowed a pig cooker from a friend who had one he'd never used. A guy came up to me at that party and said, `Come next week and cook one for me.' At that party, a fellow from Richmond mentioned the Farmer's Market Festival, for barbecue.''
Since that beginning, the catering business has grown to about a dozen weddings, company functions and private parties a year. The fare has expanded to include - in addition to roast pig - potato salad, coleslaw, baked beans, beef and smoked turkey. The turkeys have become a regular sideline, with Terry doing between 60 and 70 - in the pig cooker - each year from Thanksgiving to Christmas.
At first, one of his roommates was a partner, but Terry stopped working with him about 1988 and continued on his own.
When NADEP's impending closure was announced, he first planned to move with his job to Florida.
``When NADEP closes, I was pretty much assured a job in Jacksonville,'' Terry says. ``I put in for the Jacksonville job and was accepted for it. Later on, I decided it wasn't what I wanted to do. I didn't want to start over. For years people have been telling me to patent that sauce, so I put in for voluntary early retirement.''
Lynn quit her job as a quality assurance manager with Teledyne, in Hampton, to devote her energies to getting the new business off the ground. But their first attempt to bring the product to market left them wondering if they had made a serious mistake.
In March 1995, they contacted a marketing firm on the Peninsula, run by someone Terry had dealt with previously. The marketers assured them they could - and would - take care of everything, dropping names like ``Famous Amos'' in the discussions.
The Grapes put up money, through the marketing group, for the first production run and sat back, waiting for things to happen. Lynn even went to work for a subsidiary of the marketing firm.
``By mid-August, we realized the marketing group wasn't working,'' Terry recalls. ``Nothing had been done. The marketing group had done absolutely nothing.''
The dispute is now in litigation. Lynn's job evaporated; she began doing consulting work to keep cash coming in as they started over from ground zero.
The false start cost them about $10,000 and, equally important, it cost them time. When they contacted the bottler with whom they had arranged to put up the sauce, he thought they no longer were interested because he hadn't heard anything in four months. They made a trip to Winston-Salem, N.C., where the bottler is located, and put up earnest money to convince him they were still serious.
Taking matters into their own hands the second time around, they again journeyed to Winston-Salem for the bottling process. Lynn obtained the UPC codes, Southern Atlantic Labels of Chesapeake printed the labels, and the bottler assisted with the legally required ingredient and nutrition information that had to be printed on them.
``The bottler does the mixing,'' Terry explained. ``My recipes are for one or two gallons; we bumped it up to 600 gallons. The two red barbecue sauces are hot-packed, cooked at 180 degrees Fahrenheit. The seafood sauce is a cold-pack process.''
One day last November, after work, the two drove to Winston-Salem, arriving at midnight. The next day, they prepared all three sauces, tasting as they went, because of the different effects of spices used in quantity.
``We only used three-fourths of the crushed red pepper because the commercial version was stronger,'' Terry says, ``but we ended up using all of the chili powder and cumin in the special sauce.''
It was all in bottles by day's end, 500 cases each of the dark sauces and 44 cases of the seafood sauce, at 12 bottles per case. Their work done, the Grapes returned to Norfolk that night, bringing 10 cases of each back with them.
``We broke a record,'' Terry says. ``The bottler told us no one had ever come down and put up three new products at the same time.''
It was an expensive record, however. The first production run had set them back about $13,000. The first bottle of ``Bosse Hogge'' was yet to be sold.
``It was too late for holiday stocking,'' Lynn says, ``so we put some baskets together with each of the three sauces. We were selling them and sent some to our mother, back in Nebraska, who became our best salesman.''
The products, coupled with Ma Grape's aggressive approach, have created quite a stir in Monroe, Neb., ``population 230, counting the dogs and cats,'' according to Lynn. The Columbus (Neb.) Telegram devoted almost a page to their story, complete with color picture of their mother holding the sauces.
In Hampton Roads, progress has been a little slower. Two stores in Hampton, two in Ocean View and one in Virginia Beach are stocking the sauces; the Grapes also are negotiating with a chain of specialty stores and a chain of convenience stores. The Grapes would like to see the sauces in supermarkets but are holding off on serious negotiations until closer to the start of the barbecue season, about spring, because of concern over slotting fees. Terry has an appointment to see about getting the sauces into government commissaries, and they are attempting to have their sauces included on a TV show scheduled for April that will feature local products.
Jan Palazzo of Willoughby has known Terry for 15 years.
``The first time Terry cooked a pig for us was in 1981, when my husband retired from the Navy,'' Palazzo says. ``I like his sauce. We've all told him that he ought to sell it. I don't really like barbecue sauces, but I like his. I don't like sweet sauces, and his isn't sweet. He does good pig roasts, and everyone enjoys the sauces he prepares.''
The pig roasts are a natural place to plug the sauces, with ``Bosse Hogge'' business cards, aprons and hats. In addition to ``Bosse Hogge,'' Terry's hat reads ``The Boss'' while Lynn's says ``Boss's Boss.''
Now when people say, ``You really should sell that sauce,'' Lynn notes, they can offer them a bottle, at $2.79 apiece for the reds and $3.89, suggested retail, for the limenaise.
They're even starting to sound like entrepreneurs. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo on cover
Photos by GARY C. KNAPP
Terry Grape has put in for early retirement from the Naval Aviation
Depot, which is moving to Jacksonville, Fla., to stay in Hampton
Roads and run his barbecue sauce business.
Lynn and Terry Grape have boxes and boxes of their barbecue sauces
ready to be placed on store shelves.
The sauces can be found on the shelves of some local stores, and the
Grapes are happy to tell folks how proud they are of their product.
Graphic
GETTING THE SAUCES
``Bosse Hogge'' sauces are available from:
Dixie Grocery Store, 1039 W. Ocean View Ave., Norfolk.
INA Hurry Food Stores, 9527 First View St., Norfolk.
Bayshore Markets, 4805 Shore Dr., Virginia Beach.
The Virginia Store, 555 Settlers Landing Road, Hampton.
The Wine St. Gourmet, 22 Wine St., Hampton.
Or by calling ``Bosse Hogge'' at 583-4821 or 1-800-922-3966.
by CNB