Miss Essie's Story
Miss Essie’s is about love, comfort, family and bringing a smile to your face~ Marcus Jones
Miss Essie was born and raised on a farm in Arkansas back when segregation was still practiced.
Her father ran the farm, even having a small grocery store on the farm for people to buy produce etc. That is one of the ways he kept his family from working on other plantations. Maintaining the family business was foremost to Miss Essie’s family.
Upon adulthood, Miss Essie relocated to Arizona due to her husbands’ respiratory issues. Her husband passed on at an early age and Miss Essie raised 7 children as a single parent. One of things Miss Essie did well, and often, was cook, especially BBQ. She was privy to an old family recipe that she passed on to her own children, one of those children, Manuel Jones, has since gone on to mass produce the families 100-year old recipe of pure authentic southern excellence with his son, Marcus Jones, now the President of Miss Essie’s Southern BBQ Sauce.
Miss Essie's Southern BBQ, LLC started in June of 2003 after Marcus worked in a local eatery, The Skybox, and realized he could introduce them to a much tastier BBQ sauce then they one they were serving. Marcus and his father, brought the family recipe to life and also began producing smoked meats and other BBQ products for Skybox.
In 2007 Marcus realized after experiencing a few hurdles, that some changes needed to made in order to streamline their processes. Until this point, they had been doing everything by hand, albeit inefficiently and they knew they had to bring in some outside resources to help get them back on track. For the next ten years, Marcus worked diligently to get Miss Essie’s into a position that the business would thrive.
In 2017, Miss Essie’s essentially became a start-up again, Jones brought in partner Deon Henderson, a childhood friend turned Venture Capitalist, and together they took Miss Essie’s to the now level of success they are enjoying. From a rebranding to new recipe development, Miss Essie’s is one of the most popular sauces on the market.