Southern Love in Jars and Bottles
By Lorrie Baumann
It’s still possible to go to the Internet to find out how fast Reggie Kelly used to run 40 yards, but back in the days when the former NFL tight end was playing in neighborhood backyards, the food he ate at his family’s table was more about love than it was about the grams of protein that would eventually fuel his professional football career or even about the particular ingredients that went into the dishes, which was likely to be whatever someone who loved him had on hand. Kelly’s grandma taught him in those early Aberdeen, Mississippi, days that, whatever its other ingredients, food was supposed to taste like love – that one of its jobs was to make guests feel welcome at the family table.
His football career eventually took him away from Aberdeen, first to Mississippi State University, where he played on an athletic scholarship, and then to Atlanta, where he played for the Falcons until he signed a free agency deal with the Cincinnati Bengals. During his 13-year NFL career, he often made his way back to Aberdeen, where he decided to pass on some of his skills and his stories about the glory days in the NFL to local kids who shared the same dreams by setting up football camps in which he invited some of his former teammates to join him in Aberdeen, do a little coaching for the kids and then have meals around his family table. His relatives there in Aberdeen pitched in with some of the food, everyone bringing along their own specialties as they gathered to feed all the hungry kids, no matter their actual ages.
When Reggie’s teammates got ready to go back to their own lives, a good many of them asked for recipes to take home with them to their families. Eventually, the wife of one of his teammates suggested to Kelly’s wife, Sheila, that since Reggie was still looking for his next career, he ought to think about putting some of those recipes in jars so she could just pick them up at the supermarket.
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Potential buyers tell him that he’s moving into a “me-too” category saturated with sauces and salsas dripping with international fusion flavors or authentic food-ways traditions, and he needs a way to distinguish his products if he’s going to put them on their grocery shelves. What distinguishes his products, he says, is the flavor of that family table in Aberdeen and all the love and family support that goes into those jars labeled KYVAN Foods, a name that Reggie and Sheila created from the names of their two kids – daughter Kyla, who’s now 16, and her brother Kavan, who’s 14.
What distinguishes those products is the discipline that got Reggie Kelly all the way to the NFL, which he expressed with the line, “When you take care of the little things, the big things will follow.” He and Sheila both put that same discipline into the social media and sampling campaigns to support the brand.
What distinguishes KYVAN Foods products from others like them on the shelves is that they’re innovative: in most cases, never-before-seen-products with flavor combinations that are unique to the market, and these are the recipes that his former teammates loved enough to make sure they went home with their families.
The line includes, in addition to the Honey Apple Salsa in both Mild and Hot varieties, a Jambalaya Sauce; barbecue sauces in four flavors: Sweet BBQ Sauce, Sweet Potato BBQ Sauce, Cherry Apple BBQ Sauce and Honey Apple BBQ Sauce, Original Hot Sauce; Honey Apple Butter and Dry Barbecue Rub. The Honey Apple Salsa is based on the tomatoes and peppers that one would expect of a product labeled a “salsa,” but it has a Southern sweetness combined with spices that make it a complement for meat loaf and even spaghetti as well as its use as a dip for chips, Kelley said. “The sweet combined with savory spice notes is like a well-orchestrated symphony in your mouth. We’re hitting all the right notes,” he said. “We’ve been doing business with chain grocery stores for quite some time, and our consumers are drawn to our products because they are so different – they are unique – and because of our flavor profile.”
“We make our products with love and with a variety of flavor combinations. It’s our goal to create our products in a way that touches your soul,” he said. “Our products are designed to warm the hearts of our consumers and give them a flavor-satisfying experience that’s second to none, and it’s our hope that our neighbors, fellow Americans and the world will enjoy our tasty sauces – one bite at a time,” he added. “People tell me that the Honey Apple Butter takes them back to when their grandmothers used to make biscuits from scratch and top them with homemade jams and jellies. Stories like that warm our hearts because it lets us know that we’re making a great product that takes them back down memory lane.”
