FireTalkers: Interview With Dustin Larsen of Ott Foods
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My Ott's stories are the following. I first heard about the name "Ott's" from an artwork contest my mom entered me in when I was a young lad. I cannot recollect what the subject of the drawing was, but whatever I has done was enough to win me a bright yellow t-shirt (you gotta love the late 1970s!) with the red Ott's logo. I found out that they were a Missouri company and not from (all together now with a cowpoke drawl) "New York City!"
Fast-forward 15 or so years after having been casually familiar with a few of Ott's salad dressings. My wife and I frequented St. Louis area Denny's restaurants and became addicted to their Buffalo Chicken Strips. After I first tasted them and I absolutely had to get my grubby little paws on the sauce with which they coated them. After a bit of research my wife and I found that these Denny's locales used, yup, you guessed it, Ott's Original Wing Sauce. A bottle of it has been in our kitchen ever since.
Ott Foods was founded almost seven decades ago in the small town of Carthage, Missouri and has since spread its wings across a large section of the central U.S. in both the retail and foodservice markets and specializes in rich, creamy dressings and sauces. I recently chatted with Dustin Larsen of Ott Foods to get a take on where the company has been and where it may be headed in the future.
Scott: How big is Ott Foods currently?Dustin: We've got a total of 22 total employees now. That includes all our sales and process manufacturing at the plant, too.
Scott: Can you tell me briefly what the origin of Ott Foods is?
Dustin: It was back in the 1940s. Walter Ott was the original founder of the Famous Dressing. He just started basically a recipe of his mother's, and started making that with his wife, Ruby. They were serving that in a cafe they opened in Carthage, Missouri on old Route 66 and just a lot of travelers came through. They would even get famous stars from time to time like Gene Autry and Clark Gable. Some of those people wanted to take it with them. A lot of people came through the cafe just to get the dressing and head on down the road.
Eventually Walter shut down the cafe and started delivering that around locally. At that point he had done that a number of years. Years later he passed away and his wife was left with the company. It eventually ended up being sold. And from there it kind of expanded.
Scott: About what year was that?
Dustin: That would have been roughly 1970.
Scott: Around what time did Ott Foods expand from producing only the Famous Dressing to making things like BBQ sauces?
Dustin: From the point of being sold, all of that was done over a period of twenty years. It had slowly grown to a large number of dressings from the reduced calories, we got two sugar-frees. The Ranch Dressing, Poppy Seed Dressing, just a lot of variety. Of course, then we went into the barbecue sauces. We had Ott's Original BBQ. Then we expanded and did some things with the Silver Dollar City BBQ Sauce.
Then, of course, the Original Wing Sauce became an important part of our business. But that part of it has really skyrocketed over the past two to three years. It's really grown a lot for us.
Scott: Yeah...personally that's my favorite sauce you do. It got me into being a big fan of Ott Foods. I tasted the salad dressings as a kid. But what really got me hooked on Ott's was the Wing Sauce.
Dustin: Do you feel that the growing trend towards spiciness has effected any of the other sauces you've created?
We've created a Chipotle Ranch, which isn't in the retail market; it's in the food service market. We kind of see a trend where spiciness is becoming more popular and we're always looking into possible new products, and maybe even expanding the Wings Sauce line doing some different things with those. As the Original Wing Sauce grows, we can eventually grow on that side of things outside of dressing.
We have had a Honey Habanero BBQ Sauce. That was on the food service side. We've played a little in the spicy world but I can see us growing in that area over the next few years.
Scott: Something to look forward to. Could you describe how your business is divided as far as providing dressings and sauces for the food service industry, as well as providing them for the retail market?
Dustin: We're mainly in the Midwest both in retail and food service. Since you said you're in the St. Louis area, we're in the Schnuck's and Dierbergs supermarkets. Of course, there's the AWG (Associated Wholesale Grocers) in Springfield, Kansas City and Oklahoma City warehouses. We go down into Texas, also. But we're pretty much here in the Midwest.
On the food service line really allows us to offer a larger variety, and we have a lot of regional distributors and then also we are housed in the larger ones also, such as U.S. Foodservice and Sysco. We're pretty strong with your local places, as far as a Kohl or a Springfield Grocer. There's Reinhart FoodService. Graves Menu Maker. American Foodservice. EFCO in Kansas. Ben E. Keith, we're starting to go with them in Oklahoma City. Real regional in both lines, but it's not like one expands out farther than the other. It's just that in food service we've got more variety. Our product listing, we carry generally about 9 SKUs and most of out retail market as far as our dressings, usually three BBQ sauces, and then of course our hot wing sauce, all those make up the majority.
Scott: In regards to the food service industry, are their any big chains of restaurants that use your sauces or dressings?
Dustin: We're stronger on the side of schools and health care markets. And then more of your mom and pop locations, that's probably where we're the strongest regarding restaurants. You've got some of your places that started out maybe a a local and then have grown into small chains...I guess you can call them chains, because they've franchised out a bit. We do some business that way but no large, nationwide ones like an Applebee's or a T.G.I. Fridays, nothing like that.
Scott: Are you looking into expanding your market into getting bigger fish like that?
Dustin: We're always looking to expanding in whatever way we can. The larger ones might be a little tougher for us, being a regional item. We're not always housed across the nation. If they've got their franchises spread out and they use a number of warehouses all over the country then it makes it more difficult for them to add our products. It has been done before and we've had business in the past. The kind of customers that are wider-based.
We also do private labeling, too.
Scott: I was going to ask you about private labeling. What are the details on that?
Dustin: We've done all sorts of things as far as that. We've done Chef Emeril BBQ Sauce. We've done a hot sauce from the east, in the Philadelphia area you might be familiar with called Curly's.
Scott: Curly's Creations?
Dustin: Yeah, that's it. They're just a local guy out around Philadelphia and he's doing a number of things. He just added a few new flavors, too. We do a lot of hot sauce for him, wing-type sauce, etc. It's pretty straightforward; we just bottle the product for people. They're usually small, local, BBQ establishments and then we've done it for larger clients like Chef Emeril.
Scott: Does Ott Foods pay attention to what's going on in the industry? Do you closely watch to what your competitors are doing, or do you pretty much stick to yourselves and come up with flavors and concepts on your own?
Dustin: A company is always watching the whole market in general. As far as looking for new, unique things we start creating things on our own. We also look to see what's popular. We might have a request that someone would like us to make something and they're interested in it, and it would be some good business we would definitely look at adding that type of dressing or sauce.
But with today's market, you just can't add every flavor because it can be fairly expensive to market the product or get it into a warehouse for distribution also. There's a lot of factors that go into it.
We're always looking for new ideas and playing with new recipes. We really haven't had anything too new in a while.
Scott: Anything you're developing now that may be debuted soon?
Dustin: We're not real close. We did the 50th anniversary of Silver Dollar City [a theme park near Branson, Missouri] so we just did a Honey Blackberry BBQ Sauce for them that's going to be park this year. The wanted a BBQ sauce for that, so we created that for them. Since it was a special anniversary, we wanted to make sure people could get something a bite different, a little off the beaten path.
They're going to be selling it in the retail shops in the park, and they're going to be using some gallon sauces that they're gonna be serving on food for the BBQ festival.
Scott: I'm heading down there in July, I'm gonna have to check that out, it sounds really good.
What are your best selling products?
Dustin: Number one is still the Famous Dressing, by far. We've got a few that have really taken off recently, such as our Vidalia Onion, our Poppy Seed Dressing is doing really strong sales. Our Ranch has taken off; it's creamier than our competitors and has a nice flavor and consistency and sticks to your food, especially if you're dipping it.
And like I said, our Original Wing Sauce has really been doing well. It's pretty big for us. We're really excited about that, because we think it has a lot of room to grow, because there's still a lot of people who haven't yet experienced it yet. Once they learn that we make a hot wing sauce, they try it and get hooked on it. It's a high quality sauce with a price point that's very competitive for what you get.
Another aspect about the Original Wing Sauce is that it's pretty much ready to go. Some of the sauces of our competitors are sort of incomplete, where you buy it and and usually have to add something like butter to it. With ours, it's basically ready-to-eat right out of the bottle and ready to coat some wings.
Related Articles:
Review: Ott's Original Wing Sauce
Recipe: Ott's Buffalo Bean Soup
New to Hot Sauce? Here Are the Top 10 Hot Sauces For Beginners
Comments
2010-06-14 05:59:32
2010-10-03 15:21:33
2010-10-03 17:41:46
Jim, it's not available outside of the Midwest in retail locations. However, Ott's is so inexpensively priced that it's still a great deal even with added shipping costs if you order it online.
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