By Mark Wineka
mwineka@salisburypost.com
Jack Moore is superstitious. He likes the number “7.”
In the mornings since he retired as a telephone lineman, he loads up the trunk of a 1999 Chevrolet Lumina with seven cases of his Blowin’ Smoke barbecue sauce and follows the route he laid out the previous night with Google Maps.
He heads out of Salisbury for mom-and-pop meat and produce markets and, while he drives, rewinds in his head the pitch he’ll make for his sauce.
Moore tells storeowners it was 25 years in the making.
He describes going to China Grove’s Farmers Day in July with the first manufactured batch and selling 50 bottles ó just by having people taste it.
He likes to hold the bottle up and let them take in the label, with its open-fire logo.
He confides that Blowin’ Smoke has one of the best combinations of “sweet and spicy” they’ll ever find.
Maybe it’s because they can tell Moore isn’t a salesman that the storekeepers often agree to try the sauce on their shelves.
Blowin’ Smoke sits in about 75 stores in the Piedmont now, including a dozen locally.
Moore’s family has bought him a huge North Carolina map so he can mark all of the locations with push-pins. He acknowledges an in-car GPS would be helpful when he takes off on his sales forays.
“The company hasn’t seen fit to buy me one yet,” he says, laughing, knowing he and his wife, Jeanie, are the company.
But 56-year-old Jack Moore has high hopes for his fledgling product. He dreams of seeing the barbecue sauce on grocery store shelves nationwide someday and its decal on the side of a NASCAR racer.
In 2009, the more immediate future, he wants to talk with a distributor about taking his sauce into five more states. He’s also thinking about expanding his product line with a vinegar-based dipping sauce.
Long range, the Moores just hope Blowin’ Smoke succeeds enough that the business allows them to give back and help other people.
Moore family legend says the name “Blowin’ Smoke” originated in a meeting among Jack and Jeanie; their sons, Sandy and Daniel; and the boys’ wives, Mandy and Sara.
“One of the first things people say is, ‘Is it hot?’ ” Jack acknowledges. “Then I say, ‘Let me tell you about that.’ ”
In the family meeting, Mandy and Sara apparently suggested “Blowin’ Smoke,” since Jack had been blowing smoke for years about going retail with his barbecue sauce. Everyone but Jack liked the name.
He warned that people would assume it was a hot barbecue sauce, which it isn’t.
The rest of the family told him he was missing the point and again reminded him how long he had been blowing smoke.
“I didn’t laugh,” he says. “I didn’t think it was funny.”
But it was like a snowball rolling downhill. Everyone started calling his sauce Blowin’ Smoke, and Jack eventually embraced it.
He turned to local artist Betty Sedberry to design a logo. Matthew Overcash created a Web site for him, and he and Jeanie incorporated their business as Jack and Gigi (a nickname for her) Enterprises.
Jack’s research also led him to Bobbees Bottling in Louisburg, which specializes in bottling sauces, syrups, marinades and seasonings.
Owners Jack and Patty Pyritz handed Moore a package of information detailing all the things he would have to do before Blowin’ Smoke could be manufactured and sold in stores. At first glance, it was overwhelming.
“I’m a plain man,” Moore says. “I’m not a businessman. It was tough to figure these things out.”
When Moore first walked into the Bobbees Bottling offices, he also noticed its “Wall of Fame” ó all the products the company had bottled. Many of them were barbecue sauces, representing people with dreams like his.
Moore gulped at the competition, but the Pyritzes assured him that 85 percent of those products on the wall had been successful. “That made me feel a little bit better,” Moore says.
As part of his marketing, Moore did cooking “demonstrations” with the sauce in Salisbury, Spencer, Winston-Salem, Yadkinville and Mount Pleasant. “The cooking part of this is so important with barbecue sauce,” he says.
Friends have been knowing about Moore’s sauce for years.
“It’s a little tangy, but sweet,” Michael Hensley says. “I like it on the Boston butts Jack cooks, but you can use it as a dip.”
John Smith says he grew up in Lexington and knows about barbecue and sauces. He describes Blowin’ Smoke as having “just the right amount of heat where it needs to be.” In the past, Smith has made sure many of his own friends have tried Moore’s sauce.
Moore says Blowin’ Smoke started some 25 years ago when he would watch Roger and Pam Pinnix, his old neighbors in Spencer, cooking country-style ribs with their own sauce.
One day Jack asked Pam what went into the sauce Roger was using. She explained that it was a bunch of things, including honey, ketchup and “everything in the kitchen.”
“Honey is real important, it really is,” Moore says, describing how he started to experiment with his own combinations. Over time, Jack and his buddies at the Spencer firehouse cooked for their NASCAR trips to the night race every August in Bristol.
Jack would cook market-style ribs on his old Holland grill, wrap them in foil and tenderize them in coolers, while incorporating his homemade sauce.
A trip to the NCAA regional baseball tournament at Mississippi State in 2003 inspired Moore to expand his grilling endeavors. He learned a lot from the “Left Field Lounge Lizards” at that ballpark and when he came home, Keith Lane converted an old oil tank to an all-day cooker for him.
He soon started trying his sauce on half-chickens, baby back ribs, Boston butts and shrimp.
Moore realized that to bring out the flavor of peppers and certain spices he needed specific temperatures, and he also accepted that simpler might be better. He removed many of the ingredients from the original sauces and kept refining things. He credits Jeanie’s sense of taste and smell with making the final Blowin’ Smoke better.
“That’s how we actually dialed the recipe in,” he says.
Before going public, Moore often made batches of the sauce in an 8-quart pot for private sale or to give away.
As usual Monday, the Moores had their annual Christmas drop-in when friends came to the house for dinners of baby back ribs and chicken. Jack cooked all day, smothering the layers of meat and poultry with his sauces.
Many of the people stopping by brought toys as donations, and the Moores carried the Christmas gifts to the Salvation Army this morning.
The Salvation Army received something else: three cases of Blowin’ Smoke.
For more information on Blowin’ Smoke, visit the Web site at www.blowinsmokebbqsauce.com.