“It was just really sugary and not a lot of flavour.”
Adam Winter (far left) and the Four Saucemen team, who are looking to export their barbecue spice rubs to the United States.
The beginning of The Four Saucemen brand, like many good ideas, can be traced back to an afternoon with a few good mates around a barbecue. It was 2016.
“We saw an ad for Meatstock Auckland. We all had charcoal barbecues. [We thought] ‘Let’s enter this event – it might be just a bit of fun. We can go and have a beer and see if we’re actually any good at cooking,’” says Winter.
As it happened, it was all of the above.
“I think there were about 40 teams, mostly from New Zealand. A couple of big teams from Australia. And we picked up a 2nd place award for our pork ribs at the first event.
“We were using our own rubs and sauces.”
‘Can we get another 2000?’
That wasn’t always the plan. Winter and his teammates had planned to use the hard-to-come-by American products – until they tasted them.
“The spices tasted old, and we were like, ‘Let’s just try to make it ourselves.’”
They came up with a DIY recipe for pork, brisket and chicken.
“Meatstock came around again in 2018 and we got first-place pork ribs, third-place chicken, fourth-place lamb, sixth-place brisket, and we ended up second-equal for that comp out of 53 teams, which was huge for us.”
Winter and his wife Sarah were making all of the rubs and sauces from home. Their competition success brought commercial interest.
“One of the local barbecue shops in Auckland contacted us and said, ‘I hear you’re making your own barbecue rubs for these comps. Everyone’s talking about it. Is there any way we can buy them and sell them?’ We both had full-time jobs and I said to Sarah, ‘Let’s make up little 100g pouch bags of our pork rub and see if it sells.’”
They did. Then came a bigger order for the Auckland Home Show.
“We were mixing it in plastic buckets with one of those plastic mixers on the end of your drill.”
All 500 packets sold.
“He rang me on Monday, he said, ‘Can we get another 2000?’”
And that’s more or less where the pleasure became the business. When the first Covid-19 lockdown closed the doors of the automotive business, they decided to give barbecuing their full attention.
“I said to Sarah, let’s just get on the phone and see if we can sell the stuff and give it three months. If it works out after three months, we’ll do this full-time. If not, we’ll just go back to the other business.”
The Four Saucemen’s Manuka Hot Honey Rub, the product that opened the gates to the US.
Fourth equal, out of 900
Three months went by, and Winter was selling his products to most butchers and virtually every barbecue store in the country.
“We had a good rollout and really good support from the locals. Then we got it into Mitre 10, Faro Supermarkets, New World and Pak’nSave.”
Next stop, the world.
Winter had enjoyed a certain amount of success by sending his creations to the biggest barbecue competition in the world, the American Royal World Series of Barbecue. Among the categories at the Kansas City event is a rub and sauce competition.
“Our pork rub and chicken rub sort of did okay. You’re getting 900 entries, and these ones are getting in the top 30s and 40s.
“And then Manuka Hot Honey. When we launched, we thought, let’s send that to the States, and it got fourth equal out of 900 and something entries.”
That’s not the only success the Four Saucemen have had in the US. When Macdonald became the first international winner at the 2023 Jack Daniel’s World Championship Invitational Barbecue in Tennessee, he did it with a Four Saucemen finish.
“It’s the most prestigious barbecue event in the world,” Macdonald says. “They take the state champions from every state, as well as the national champions from countries outside the United States, and they put them in a park and make them cook against each other.
“We won the brisket category using Adam’s ‘The White Rub’ to finish it and get that flavour hit right there. We’ve been tremendously successful and blessed, and one of the core reasons for that is because we use great ingredients, including Four Saucemen products.”
Jared Macdonald (left) during his time as a judge on TVNZ’s Cooks on Fire, with Nici Wickes and Ganesh Raj.
The Manuka Hot Honey success led to a launch on Amazon, and now Winter is working through an export option to supply a major US supermarket chain.
“Kroger supermarkets in America, we’ve got a good friend of ours who supplies them with a product, and he feels he can get us in there.”
‘Say yes and just figure it out’
Macdonald says the US market for barbecue rubs and sauces is “saturated”.
“You go into Walmart or Kroger or any of their big supermarket chains, go into the barbecue sauce aisle, and it’s 1000 products deep, or you can go on to the rubs and there’s 500 rubs.
“Where I think that the [Four Saucemen] product’s going to hit with the American consumer is the same way it’s hit with the Australian and New Zealand consumer. These amazing compositions of flavour using a much broader range of ingredients [than] the salt, pepper, garlic.”
He believes the Kiwi brand’s entry to the US could coincide with American consumers diversifying their flavours.
“The innovators in the US tend to go really well. The Texas Monthly publish a top 50 list of the best barbecue joints every three years, and the stars of that list are the people who are innovating.
“There seems to be a hunger for outside-of-the-box thinking, which is totally the lane that the Four Saucemen rubs and sauces are operating in, using the full spectrum of flavour: oregano, orange peel, mānuka honey, beetroot powder.”
Adam and Sarah Winter are the co-founders of The Four Saucemen.
This year could round out an incredible decade for The Four Saucemen.
“Man, I wish I’d known how big it was gonna be,” reflects Winter on a whirlwind 10 years.
There’s no telling how big it could become, but they’re ready to find out.
“If somebody came along and said, ‘Hey, Adam, here’s 1000 supermarkets, can you do it?’, I’m always going to say yes.
“I guess our mantra from the start was always say yes and just figure it out.”
Mike Thorpe is a senior journalist for the Herald, based in Christchurch. He has been a broadcast journalist across television and radio for 20 years and joined the Herald in August 2024.