PITTSBURGH — Jamal Etienne-Harrigan has always liked to cook. But he never imagined he'd end up doing it for a living when he whipped up a batch of neon green wing sauce for a football party back in 2005.
The Connecticut native was then working at a Red Lobster in State College, Pennsylvania, after dropping out of Penn State during his sophomore year. To kill time when he wasn't waiting tables, he started making alcohol-infused cakes inspired by cocktails. The moist, boozy gems included a swirl rum cake that tasted exactly like a Bahama Mama.
"I was almost like an alchemist — always trying to impress people with what I could come up with," recalled Harrigan, 40, who lives in Pittsburgh's Fairywood neighborhood.
He made so many cakes for co-workers that he eventually grew bored with it, he says. So he was ready for a new challenge when friends asked him to concoct a wing sauce for a Philadelphia Eagles game that September. He even came up with a cool name: Area 51, after the Nevada military base where some believe the government hides crashed flying saucers and alien bodies.
"I thought, 'I will knock it out of the park with something crazy,'" he said.
The sauce he made from scratch with avocado, jalapeno, tequila and green food dye proved such a hit that he started experimenting with other sauces and spice rubs. They paved the way for what in March 2015 would become The Smokey City's 412 BBQ. It was rebranded in 2019 as Uncle Jammy's (www.unclejammys.com) and sold in Whole Foods and other markets.
"I was no longer the cake guy — now I was the sauce guy!" he says.
Giant Eagle climbed aboard Uncle Jammy's train last summer, offering a handful of his sauces and rubs in all Market District and select Giant Eagle stores. Last week, GetGo named a barbecue sandwich featuring his Hooray for IPA sauce after him. Created by Chef Thomas Seaman, it's called the Uncle Jammy's Chicken Sammy ($5.99), and it is currently available at all GetGo Cafe + Market locations.
"Sometimes you just find the magic," said Paul Abbott, senior director of Market District at Giant Eagle.
Today, Etienne-Harrigan offers nine bottled sauces and 10 dry rubs and seasonings (nine at Whole Foods and six at Giant Eagle), and many more are in development. A people person to the core, he still sells in person at trade shows and food events. Sauces in 13.5-ounce bottles range in price from $10 to $15 and rubs in 5-ounce jars sell for $8-$15.
Consumers like to see local products on store shelves, but winning shelf space can be hard for food entrepreneurs. Giant Eagle, for example, considers hundreds of new products each year but carries only 15-20% of them, said Abbott.
Price and trends are major considerations, and stores have to believe new products will outperform whatever items they're replacing. They took a chance on Uncle Jammy's, Abbott said, because he had an "interesting entrepreneurial spirit" as well as a good story.
His flavor profiles also passed the taste test, and Giant Eagle execs loved the colorful labels designed by graphic artist Jason McKoy.
"They're fun and playful, which is great for the consumer," Abbott said. "His products exceeded expectations."
The original Uncle Jammy is quick to point out that he is not an overnight success; it took many years of hard work and countless hours of research, he says. "It was such a slow burn."
While he had about 30 wing sauce recipes when he left State College for Pittsburgh in 2010, he was "dead broke" his first two years here. It took another three years after that to figure out the nuts and bolts of the wholesale sauce business — licensing and trademarking, which products to start with (one sauce and two rubs), who to sample, where to do live demos, how to buy bottles, how to pack it, etc. All the while, he hustled to the point of exhaustion at trade, craft and mall shows and farmers markets.
He credits much of his success to the Pittsburgh Food and Beverage Network, which connects social-minded small food businesses and offers support.(They featured his sauces at a pig roast.) But you can't discount his drive, which is much like the bright green sauce that got him started — crazy intense.
"It's been wonderful," he says. "Pittsburgh is going to love me and I'm happy for it."
