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It All Started at the Grocery Store

ɲ Community Coffee Henry Norman “Cap” Saurage started making coffee in 1919 in his grocery store in Baton Rouge. He soon began blending coffee full-time — laying the foundation for what would become Community Coffee.

ɲ Jack Miller’s Before he ever dreamed up his now-famous tangy barbecue sauce, Jack Miller was working in his family’s small grocery store in Sunset, Louisiana. Three generations later, the Millers are still at it — making barbecue sauce the same way Jack did, and still rooted in that small-store spirit where it all began. ɲ Savoie’s Eula and her husband Tom Savoie bought a small country grocery store off in Opelousas, Louisiana, and opened it as Savoie’s Grocery. They didn’t know it then, but they were laying the groundwork for a Cajun food go-to — known for traditional andouille, tasso and dressing mixes. Ms. Eula was even the first to market roux in a jar in the 1960s. Savoie’s is still family-owned and -operated. ɲ Golden Flake Golden Flake chips were once cooked in kettles in the basement of a grocery store in Birmingham, Alabama; that’s a humble start for what would become an iconic Southern snack brands. It was 1923 — the same year J.P. Rouse founded City Produce — when Golden Flake founders Frank Mosher and Mose Lischkoff began slicing and frying potatoes by hand, packaging them in paper bags they stapled shut. They called the company Magic City Foods. Under Sloan Bashinsky, Sr., (who took over in 1956) the name officially changed to Golden Flake in 1957. Golden Flake grew into a multimillion-dollar operation and, in 2016, was acquired by Utz Brands, Inc., a fourth-generation, family-led company founded in 1921 by William and Salie Utz in their Hanover, Pennsylvania, home. Today, Utz is the largest privately held, independent snack brand in the U.S., with a portfolio that celebrates regional flavor and tradition. That includes Zapp’s, the bold Louisiana-born brand launched by Ron Zappe in 1985 after the oil bust left him looking for a new venture. His initial creation was the nation’s first spicy Cajun potato chip. Like Golden Flake, Zapp’s are kettle-cooked in small batches for maximum crunch.

Zat’s Where It Started by David W. Brown My grandmother, who everyone called Bootsie, lived in a little house in Convent, Louisiana. From her front porch, you could see the levee and a couple of ancient oak trees whose gnarled branches reached wide in every direction; she was convinced they would one day come crashing down and destroy her home. Some 40-something years after I first learned of this impending doom, and almost 20 years after her death, the branches remain outstretched, and her little house remains standing. I believe the sheer force of her anxiety continues to protect the house. I n my earliest years, we lived in a little trailer a little further down River Road. Even after we moved a few miles away, I still recall spending most of my childhood at her house and, as a young man, even moved in with her for a few months after 9/11, before shipping off to boot camp.

50 ROUSES SUMMER 2025 • WWW.ROUSES.COM