Meat&Poultry - July 2012 - 36

COOKING OUT

A growing business
Curly’s Foods I nc. is owned by Smithfield Foods Inc., as part of the John Morrell & Co. division, with its plant in Sioux City, Iowa. Curly’s is a foodservice and retail supplier of raw and fully cooked ribs, as well as smoked pork, beef and chicken entrées. Its retail products can be found at many club stores and supermarkets. The company was originally independent ly owned and began operating in 1988 under Neil Feinberg and Bob Brady, still its general manager. It was sold to Morrell in 1997, and subsequently bought by Smithfield. John Pauley, Curly’s president, says the barbecue-manufacturing sector totals about $100 million annually. “We’re about $18 million of that figure, and we’re growing 18 percent annually, double-digit growth every year. Between Hormel [Lloyd’s] and us, we have about 60 percent of the business in the category. The remaining 40 percent are regional, private label and small.” Barbecue has become more important in foodservice in the last few years, Pauley says, because of the wide variety of flavors now available. “Barbecue used to be seen as a regional phenomenon, and it still is, to a degree. But the foodservice industry is no longer afraid of that. Regionally, brisket is very popular in Texas, pork butts are big in Kansas City, and in the Carolinas pork is popular, fl avored with a vinegar sauce. But the greatest change is in retail, where we’ve taken the work out of it, and it can be easily prepared at home,” Pauley points out. “We say, ‘Smoked for hours, ready in minutes.’” Another new trend in barbecue is making product as an ingredient to be used in other dishes, rather than as a stand-alone meal, Pauley says. “So, we make barbecue meat with no sauce, which can be added to other items.” Demand for this approach to barbecue has arisen because some people don’t like the sauces typically associated with the product, and they’re looking for ways to “spice up” other dishes, he says. “Barbecue can be used as an ingredient in burritos, soups, stews and even on top of salads. Our research has shown we need to give the consumer as many choices as possible. We also use a standard barbecue sauce, so people can doctor it, or make their own,” he adds. Pauley agrees with Schweitzer t hat it’s important to make barbecue easy for home cooks to use. “We’re in a world now where people just don’t have the time to smoke meat for hours and hours,” he says. “QSRs are also starting to embrace barbecue, those restaurants missed out on this great product for a lot of years.” Pauley also thinks the most impor tant par t of barbecue is t he meat. “We use pork butts, which is the most fl avorful, and cook them for five or six hours. It’s a relatively inexpensive cut of meat that can be turned into a ton of fl avor.” He says Curly’s gets very involved in barbecue recipes for its consumers, both supplying recipes, and making recipes customers send to the company available to other customers. They can be found on the company’s web site.

“A lot of consumers love to barbecue, but they don’t have the time to do so. We make it for them.”

The ‘sauce is boss’
Possibly disagreeing with the “meat
Curly’s promotes its barbecue products using a variety of recipes available on its website. The recipe for easy pork tacos (above) uses Curly’s Sauceless Pork.

is the most important part” theory is Tom Murphy of Ken’s Foods, in

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