It All Started With Nine Bottles

It was 1977, in Letitia Head's kitchen in Shidler, Oklahoma. Danny Head had just bought a barbecue sauce recipe from his uncle Bud who was a Navy cook, not a chef. Bud had whipped up the recipe aboard a destroyer during World War II. The crew loved it. Bud brought the recipe home to Grainola, a tiny town in north-central Oklahoma, and made it for church groups and community gatherings for years.

After Danny and Letitia bought the recipe from Uncle Bud, they mixed that first batch at home with their four-year-old son CR standing on a step stool. CR’s job was to fill the bottles with a funnel and lick the labels so his mom could stick them on.

"Our first batch made nine bottles," CR says. "We sold all nine the first day and thought we were rich."

Today, Head Country can make a far cry more than 9 bottles…more like tens of millions of bottles a day year.

It’s a top-notch food-safety operation, still made in Ponca City, employing forty to fifty Oklahomans (none of which lick the labels to stick on the bottles) . And in its home state, Head Country sells an estimated 60 to 70 percent of all the barbecue sauce on the shelf. That’s a level of loyalty that the big retailers have told CR they don't see in any other category.

Asked why he thinks that's the case, and CR doesn't start with the recipe. He starts with people.

"When Oklahomans make a grocery list, they don't write 'barbecue sauce,'" he says. "They write mustard, ketchup, Head Country."

CR spent his career hearing those stories. The mom whose son called from college in Michigan, panicked, because his Walmart didn't carry it, so she shipped him a care package of Head Country and Griffin's syrup, the tastes he grew up on. The TSA agent at the airport who told CR they can spot a bottle of Head Country on the X-ray scanner just from its shape, because so many travelers pack it in their suitcases.

He earned those customers a few at a time. Out of college at the University of Central Oklahoma, CR was headed for a job at MetLife, until he found out he'd have to wear a tie.

"I called my dad and said, 'Dad, they're gonna make me wear a tie. I don't want to.' He said, 'Well, get your butt up here and sell barbecue sauce.'"

So CR did, weekend after weekend, for decades: home and garden shows, boat shows, hunting shows, state fairs.  He said he’d give out 15,000 samples at the state fair alone, handing out cocktail weenies dipped in sauce, recipe cards, and coupons.  

Head Country became a founding member of the Made in Oklahoma (MIO) Coalition.Founded more than twenty years ago in partnership with the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture the MIO coalition builds brand awareness and consumer loyalty for food and beverages made right here in Oklahoma. What started with a handful of founding companies like Head Country has grown to more than 100 Oklahoma food and beverage makers producing over 500 products — an industry that employs some 50,000 Oklahomans and generates $3.3 billion a year for the state.

In other words, the coalition's whole mission is the thing CR practiced one sample at a time.

CR still shows up with his barbecue pit for pork sandwich giveaways and coalition events, helping newer Oklahoma food companies get the shelf space that's so hard to win alone.

"If I buy Mountain View sausage, or Schwab's, or Griffin's, all of that goes back into our local economy," he says. "You're helping more Oklahomans be successful and create a better state."

The family sold the company some years back, and CR will tell you honestly that change is part of business. But his name is still on every bottle, and he still acts like it. He keeps cases of sauce in his car with a license plate that reads: CME4BBQ. He gives bottles away to strangers who recognize the label, just to watch their faces. He runs Head Country Catering now, hauling his BBQ pit to corporate events and feeding a few hundred people at a time.

 The secret to his pork ribs?  Head Country apple habanero.

At one of those caterings, a woman told him it was the best barbecue she'd ever had. When he told her the sauce was made right here in Oklahoma, she was floored. She'd been eating it for twenty years and had no idea.

That's exactly why Oklahoma All for Food exists. Nearly half of Oklahomans don't know that a lot of the food in their cart was likely grown, raised, or made here. Behind so much of that food is a story like CR’s: a family, a kitchen, and a kid on a step stool.