Dayton sauce to spice up grocery shelves
A Dayton-based sauce is about to give southwest Ohio more flavor.
Mutt’s Sauce will hit the shelves of about 60 Daytonarea and Cincinnati-area Kroger stores by May 2019, owner Charlynda Scales told Audrey Ingram of Dayton Tech Guide.
“It’s exciting, and definitely a testament to my team,” she said. “I’m happy to be able to finally provide a lot of locations for people to pick up their favorite sauce.”
Mutt’s Sauce was part of Kroger’s Buy Local, a program that highlights local products.
Buy Local is a store-by-store program. As a result, Scales said she had to pitch her products to individual managers at each store.
The new “corporate planogram” Kroger account is the payoff for two years of work, she told Ingram.
A Tennessee native, Scales spent 11 years in active duty in the U.S. Air Force, the last five of which was in the Miami Valley at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Mutt’s, an all-purpose sauce, is based on a family recipe her late grandfather bequeathed to her in 2013.
Scale started Mutt’s Sauce after partnering with a Dayton chapter of SCORE mentor.
That nonprofit organization provides free services to entrepreneurs and small business owners.
In 2017, Bob Evans Farms named Mutt’s Sauce a winner of the company’s “Heroes to CEOs” contest. Mutt’s Sauce and two other businesses were awarded a $25,000 business grant.