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When he was a kid, his Great Aunt Caroline's homemade barbecue sauce figured in some of Jared Slater's favorite meals. The thick molasses, brown sugar and spice combo "was just the best," the West Conshohocken native recalls.

By: M. ENGLISH

"My aunt...was making what we now call our Original BBQ Sauce when I was still in diapers," Slater says. "She was born and raised in Philadelphia during the Great Depression along with her brother and two sisters. My mother would make me baked barbecued chicken with this awesome sauce, probably not as often as I would have liked, but when we had it...man, what a treat."

Three years ago, the local 29-year-old decided to take that passion to a whole new level, and he's been selling boutique-size batches of Aunt Caroline's BBQ at assorted craft shows and independent venues - the Conshohocken Farmers Market, for example - ever since: 16-ounce jars of Original, Honey or Hot BBQ as well as BBQ'd Pickle Sauce, Glaze or Cranberry Marinade for $6.50 each and Aunt Caroline's Natural BBQ ("made with organic ingredients...no corn syrup of any kind") for $7.50.

Slater, grandson of former West Conshohocken Police Chief Albert Slater, describes his operation as "nothing fancy - just regular pots and pans and, for the most part, me doing the stirring...with a bit of help from my mother and father and girlfriend."

He started production at his parents' home but is currently using the kitchen at his Conshohocken church...both sites, he adds, Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture-certified.

So, how does a self-described "picky eater" with no culinary training ("I've always like to cook, but I don't have any cooking background") make the leap from BBQ aficionado to entrepreneur?

As Slater tells it, his transition from amateur to pro was triggered by a forklift.

The 1997 Upper Merion Area High School grad was working the night shift in an Oaks warehouse.

"The whole thing started out with family and friends seven, maybe eight years ago," he continues. "People liked my aunt's sauce so much they'd say, 'you should try to do something with this. The thought came and went 'til, honestly, I'd be sitting on that forklift...thinking pretty much non-stop about how I'd like to try to give it a shot.

"Working in the warehouse, doing the same thing over and over...I thought, this isn't the best thing as far as I'm concerned, working for someone else when I might be able to really do something with this. Eventually, I just got to the point that I decided to leave so I could focus on the sauce fulltime and see how far I could take it."

Slater began testing the waters at craft shows. Gradually, he developed "a little bit of a following" although "sales still aren't exactly booming."

"I haven't really started to keep track of that yet," he says. "It's all been pretty gradual. The Epiphany (of Our Lord Parish) Christmas show over in Plymouth Meeting ...that's been a big one for me. Now, I'm trying to spread out and find some more shows I can get involved with. Right now, I have one coming up in Maryland and one in York, and I'm hoping to sell to local restaurants, too. Maybe even get into some supermarkets down the road."

Along the way, Slater has expanded his line well beyond Aunt Caroline's original sauce, "mostly by trial and error."

"The cranberry, for example...I always liked the taste of cranberry mixed in when I was younger, so that goes back to then," he says. "The BBQ'd Pickle Sauce...that came about by accident.

"The thing I think is different about all of the Aunt Caroline sauces...they're not smoky like most barbecue sauces, and in my opinion they're much sweeter than anything else out there. Sweet but with that little tang. I love it on just about anything, but chicken's still my favorite...or pulled pork."

Although Slater's aunt gave his venture her blessing, she died right before he actually started jarring her sauce for public sale.

"We were pretty much her family," he says. "She had one son, but he died years ago. Hopefully, she's up there watching me...and smiling."

Aunt and nephew share a second connection: Crohn's Disease - defined by Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America as "a chronic disorder that causes inflammation of the digestive or gastrointestinal tract."

"Down the road a bit, I want to donate portions of my profits to Crohn's research in the hopes of finding a cure," Slater says. "I can't do this right now because there is a very fine line between my cost and profit. This is one of the biggest reasons for me getting this business rolling. I think it might be a good idea to let people know and, maybe, make them aware of the illness, (but) I want people to buy the sauce for the taste, not for the charity."

Individual orders can be placed online at www.auntcarolinesbbq.com, although, Slater says, "people get to me in all kinds of ways...call me, e-mail me...knock on my door."

AuntCarolinesBBQ.com and the Aunt Caroline’s BBQ Logo’s are Trademarks of

Aunt Caroline’s BBQ™.

June 2011

Aunt Caroline's BBQ sauce: A home-'baste' business

By GARY PULEO

CONSHOHOCKEN — Squeezing your barbecue sauce onto a supermarket shelf in the thick of wall-to-wall competing brands can be a sticky proposition.

But one locally homegrown concoction, Aunt Caroline’s BBQ sauce, has been heating up the aisles at Whole Foods market in Plymouth Meeting for nearly a year now.

June 2011

How fitting that the natural foods market’s first orders for Jared Slater’s sweet and tangy American Dream story in a bottle — a mason jar, actually — came on the Fourth of July.

Slater’s great Aunt Caroline, the creator of the sauce that inspired his long back-burnered entrepreneurism — “Someday I gotta bottle this stuff!” — and launched a slew of spinoffs, would surely take pride in his star-spangled success.

Not discouraged by being shut out of corporate giants like Giant, which requires up to $15,000 from a vendor for the privilege of gracing its shelves, Slater casually pitched his product to a Whole Foods team leader and found the store to be warmly receptive to a local guy.

“I gave them a sample of the Original and the guy said he liked it and the store was willing to take it on,” Slater recalled, as small batches of sauce simmered away in the church basement kitchen that houses his operation.

“I’m assuming they had some team members taste it as well, and the guy did say he took it home and had it kid-tested.”

In addition to the non-smoky Original Slater likes to think of as “the unbarbeque sauce,” Whole Foods also stocks the follow-up, Blue Flame Hot sauce, for $6.99.

Though the store’s shelves bulge with enough boldly bottled brands to fill up a hot tub, Slater’s homespun label wrapped around a mason jar catches the eye and yanks at the soul of anyone who maybe remembers peeking into grandma’s cupboard as a kid.

“That’s my whole thing behind what I do,” Slater said. “I’m a country boy at heart. I wanted to keep it simple. Some people said to me, ‘you actually think you can put this in a mason jar next to other brands?’ It’s kind of down home ... something that you can see years ago maybe your grandparents throwing together and slapping a label on it.”

Every day he hits the sauce in his kitchen, Slater gets to relive the Sunday dinners when the smell of a roasting chicken slathered with his aunt’s “BBQ” wafted through the house.

He’s crafted such worthy sequels to the 16-ounce Original as Honey Style, Cranberry Marinade (available October to mid December), Glaze & Dipping Sauce, Cranberry BBQ, Honey Mustard sauce, the seasonal Holiday (starring a bit more than a smidgen each of the big boy spices of the Yuletide season: nutmeg, clove and cinnamon) and his “most unique,” Pickle.

An audacious, fluent second cousin to a dill pickle, this one is a love-it-or-hate-it proposition, Slater admitted.

Apparently the folks up in York are of the former persuasion, because he sold out of his entire supply at his wine festival booth over the weekend, he noted.

“It’s usually one of the first samples people go for at the shows,” Slater said, adding that fans like to slather it on their hamburgers.

As Aunt Caroline’s and Slater’s fame continues to grow via the big chain grocery store shelves, you’ll still find the sauce at craft shows, gourmet shops and mom and pop places like Ana’s Corner Store in East Norriton, Quarry Hill Farm in Harleysville and Cardinal Hollow Winery in North Wales.

Slater tentatively, almost sheepishly, considers that a time may come when he will outgrow the church basement.

“I have talked to a couple of bottlers,” he said.

“I don’t really want to get into that yet. Right now, I’m still doing it less expensive myself, and I like to have the control. Besides,” he added, “I guess I like the home touch.”

Est. 2005