The Supply Side: How an Arkansas-based barbecue sauce found its way into Walmart

Native Arkansan Bobby Wagner is living his dream. After working in sales for two decades at a Jonesboro tanning bed manufacturer, he was able to pitch his dad’s barbecue sauce to Walmart.

It was a pitch right down the middle.

Wagner grew up in Grubbs, located in Jackson County, southwest of Jonesboro. Barbecue enthusiasm ran in the family.

“We barbecued all the time,” Wagner said. “Dad had the sauce that he made himself and never shared his recipe. I did not even get it until I was 28 years old. But we always had this sauce at home. Everyone who tried it loved it. And it literally took one German guy, a customer of mine, who asked if I ever considered bottling the sauce. Up to that point, it had never crossed my mind.”

With his dad’s approval, Wagner began the effort to bring the sauce to market. He formed his company Fatboy Happy in 2010.

“I mean, I knew zero about selling a food product into retail,” he said. “I started researching and found a little co-packer out of Kentucky that would make like 20 cases at a time. I worked on the recipe and ingredient statements, calorie information and UPC approvals, and there was some regulation that I had to go through. But, I got my first 20 cases.”

The product had no name, and he handed it out to friends and family. He self-funded the venture while still working in sales. He initially sold to a couple of local stores. As the store count grew he found a larger co-packer, Illinois-based Country Bob, where he could order 140 cases at a time. The store count grew to more than retail outlets around Jonesboro. He hand-delivered the product to the local businesses each week.

Wagner worked with an attorney to trademark the name Fatboy Happy, but he could not secure a trademark for the name. That’s when he came up with Redneck Lipstick for the sauce name and kept his business name Fatboy Happy. Wagner said he came up with a label and packaging which contrasted with the other sauces on the retail shelf.

“The product name is too long to go horizontally on the bottle, so I did it vertically and could make the letters larger,” he said. “The lipstick part of the name came from remembering my grandma who always wore lipstick, and it got messy when she ate. It just worked and was something a little different from what else was on the shelf.”

He reinvested every dime back into the company along with tax refunds and any other extra money he was able to generate.

“That is hard, especially trying to do something that you have zero knowledge of,” Wagner said. “I messed up a lot and every mess up cost me time and more money. I was determined to make it go right. I’m not successful because I was smart. I’m successful because I failed and learned from it. You get up and keep going until you find it.”

Wagner said through his contacts he got the name of a Walmart buyer in early 2013, and he began emailing him once a week for a year. His dream was to get the sauce into Walmart, and he did not give up. He said around a year later he received a vendor application from the buyer, which he completed and returned asking for an opportunity.

“The buyer said if I could hand-deliver to stores where I could get a manager’s approval, I could start there,” Wagner said. “He was not going to put me in the category, but I could do direct-store-delivery anywhere I could get the manager to approve it. That was what I needed. He gave me a vendor number, and I got to work.”

Wagner went to his Walmart Supercenter in Jonesboro and talked to the manager about offering the product. Redneck Lipstick was also in a tall squeeze bottle, something different in a crowded category, and that caught the manager’s eye, he said. The first Walmart store took 10 cases — 120 bottles — and planned to display the local product at the end of the aisle because there was no shelf space. Wagner went home to get the product and received a call from the manager.

He wanted 50 more cases.

As the store manager was putting the product out in the store, his market manager, who oversaw 12 stores in northeast Arkansas wanted to put the product in all of those stores. Wagner delivered the 50 cases and was off to the races around January 2014.

“From the time I got my vendor number, I was in 12 Walmart stores within four hours,” Wagner explained. “That was being in the right place at the right time. I emailed the buyer and told him. And he probably thought I was nuts, and there was no way that could happen. I began delivering to the 12 stores located in a two-hour radius around Jonesboro, getting up at 3 a.m. to make the deliveries each week before work.”

Wagner and his buyer began watching the sales via Retail Link data. Within three months the sales were good enough to warrant an invite to Bentonville. He made the trip to Bentonville, and the buyer, who had never seen the product, decided to put him in the category when the modulars reset the following December. Wagner kept delivering to the stores until he was cleared to ship to the distribution center in Searcy around the beginning of 2015. The store count rose to 45, all in Arkansas.

The following year the product was tagged for 500 stores.

The Walmart buyer changed in 2017, and Wagner wanted to get the sauce in Texas stores. But his buyer, a Texan, said she loved the sauce but was not sure it would resonate with other Texans who can be picky about barbecue condiments.

Wagner said he kept pressing to get into Texas stores. A couple of months later, he was in Dallas at a tanning bed convention. He had left his laptop at home for that trip, and his phone got misplaced during the ride-share from the airport. With nothing to do one afternoon at the convention, Wagner made his way to the hotel bar. There was a guy sitting by himself, so he joined him. And they struck up a conversation for more than an hour.

And then it got interesting. Fortuitously so.

“I asked him what he did for a living, and he told me he was a district manager for Walmart,” Wagner said. “I was shocked. I told him I had a product in stores and was trying to get into Texas. He was there for a district manager’s conference that same weekend. I told him about my barbecue sauce. He had his assistant look me up in the system. He then ordered the product for his seven stores in the Dallas metro. He also introduced me to other managers in surrounding states that weekend. I got into Texas stores and the St. Louis market that weekend.”

Redneck Lipstick barbecue sauce is still on Texas shelves and is sold in about 1,000 Walmart stores. Wagner said he was able to quit his regular job in 2019 and focus solely on growing Redneck Lipstick. He relocated to Little Rock from Jonesboro three years ago.

“I have been at this for a decade now, and cash flow is good enough for me to focus on this venture full time,” he said.

Redneck Lipstick barbecue sauce retails for $3.87 at Walmart which he said is a bargain for 18 ounces. With other retailers it sells for $9.

“Looking ahead, I want to focus more on direct-to-consumer, and I am reworking my website at this time,” he said. “While the sauce is in many stores, it’s still not accessible to everyone. My dream was to get into Walmart, and now I am trying to diversify a bit and working to get into Kroger, while also growing more direct sales.”

Editor’s note: The Supply Side section^[1] of Talk Business & Politics focuses on the companies, organizations, issues and individuals engaged in providing products and services to retailers. The Supply Side is managed by Talk Business & Politics, and is sponsored by HRG^[2].

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