\u201cIt was just really sugary and not a lot of flavour.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adam Winter (far left) and the Four Saucemen team, who are looking to export their barbecue spice rubs to the United States. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw an ad for Meatstock Auckland. We all had charcoal barbecues. [We thought] \u2018Let\u2019s enter this event – it might be just a bit of fun. We can go and have a beer and see if we\u2019re actually any good at cooking,\u2019\u201d says Winter. <\/p>\n
As it happened, it was all of the above. <\/p>\n
\u201cI 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. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe were using our own rubs and sauces.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Can we get another 2000?\u2019<\/p>\n
That wasn\u2019t always the plan. Winter and his teammates had planned to use the hard-to-come-by American products \u2013 until they tasted them. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe spices tasted old, and we were like, \u2018Let\u2019s just try to make it ourselves.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
They came up with a DIY recipe for pork, brisket and chicken. <\/p>\n
\u201cMeatstock 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.\u201d <\/p>\n
Winter and his wife Sarah were making all of the rubs and sauces from home. Their competition success brought commercial interest. <\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the local barbecue shops in Auckland contacted us and said, \u2018I hear you\u2019re making your own barbecue rubs for these comps. Everyone\u2019s talking about it. Is there any way we can buy them and sell them?\u2019 We both had full-time jobs and I said to Sarah, \u2018Let\u2019s make up little 100g pouch bags of our pork rub and see if it sells.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
They did. Then came a bigger order for the Auckland Home Show. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe were mixing it in plastic buckets with one of those plastic mixers on the end of your drill.\u201d <\/p>\n
All 500 packets sold. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe rang me on Monday, he said, \u2018Can we get another 2000?\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
And that\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
\u201cI said to Sarah, let\u2019s 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\u2019ll do this full-time. If not, we\u2019ll just go back to the other business.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Four Saucemen’s Manuka Hot Honey Rub, the product that opened the gates to the US. <\/p>\n
Fourth equal, out of 900<\/p>\n
Three months went by, and Winter was selling his products to most butchers and virtually every barbecue store in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a good rollout and really good support from the locals. Then we got it into Mitre 10, Faro Supermarkets, New World and Pak\u2019nSave.\u201d<\/p>\n
Next stop, the world.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur pork rub and chicken rub sort of did okay. You\u2019re getting 900 entries, and these ones are getting in the top 30s and 40s.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then Manuka Hot Honey. When we launched, we thought, let\u2019s send that to the States, and it got fourth equal out of 900 and something entries.\u201d <\/p>\n
That\u2019s not the only success the Four Saucemen have had in the US. When Macdonald became the first international winner at the 2023 Jack Daniel\u2019s World Championship Invitational Barbecue in Tennessee, he did it with a Four Saucemen finish. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the most prestigious barbecue event in the world,\u201d Macdonald says. \u201cThey 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. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe won the brisket category using Adam\u2019s \u2018The White Rub\u2019 to finish it and get that flavour hit right there. We\u2019ve been tremendously successful and blessed, and one of the core reasons for that is because we use great ingredients, including Four Saucemen products.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jared Macdonald (left) during his time as a judge on TVNZ’s Cooks on Fire, with Nici Wickes and Ganesh Raj.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
\u201cKroger supermarkets in America, we\u2019ve got a good friend of ours who supplies them with a product, and he feels he can get us in there.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u2018Say yes and just figure it out\u2019<\/p>\n
Macdonald says the US market for barbecue rubs and sauces is \u201csaturated\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou go into Walmart or Kroger or any of their big supermarket chains, go into the barbecue sauce aisle, and it\u2019s 1000 products deep, or you can go on to the rubs and there\u2019s 500 rubs. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhere I think that the [Four Saucemen] product\u2019s going to hit with the American consumer is the same way it\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
He believes the Kiwi brand\u2019s entry to the US could coincide with American consumers diversifying their flavours. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere 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, m\u0101nuka honey, beetroot powder.\u201d <\/p>\n
Adam and Sarah Winter are the co-founders of The Four Saucemen.<\/p>\n
This year could round out an incredible decade for The Four Saucemen. <\/p>\n
\u201cMan, I wish I\u2019d known how big it was gonna be,\u201d reflects Winter on a whirlwind 10 years. <\/p>\n
There\u2019s no telling how big it could become, but they\u2019re ready to find out. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf somebody came along and said, \u2018Hey, Adam, here\u2019s 1000 supermarkets, can you do it?\u2019, I\u2019m always going to say yes. <\/p>\n
\u201cI guess our mantra from the start was always say yes and just figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt was just really sugary and not a lot of flavour.\u201d Adam Winter (far left) and the Four…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[9980,6336,16372,170920,1558,4463,138,607,4888,1656,3468,3011,97079,170923,302,194,170924,170922,111,2653,139,69,170925,170921,24035,213,8220,223,3040,23644],"class_list":["post-314957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-adam","tag-americans","tag-barbecue","tag-bbq","tag-been","tag-brand","tag-business","tag-china","tag-coal","tag-company","tag-deal","tag-four","tag-grills","tag-inuits","tag-its","tag-kiwi","tag-kiwimade","tag-likened","tag-new-zealand","tag-newcastle","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-rubs","tag-saucemen","tag-selling","tag-sports","tag-targets","tag-the","tag-us","tag-winter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}