This sauce comes to us from the Heartland (specifically the 1474 person town of Holstein Iowa) and has been produced since 2006. The Ruble Family BBQ sauce is produced by a restaurant that makes a simple, tasty peach flavored BBQ sauce.
There’s a lot to like about this sauce from its subtle peach overtone and complex dark cocoa like flavors and the sauce itself is well executed and delivers what I want in a fruit BBQ sauce – a taste of the fruit without being too overpowering or too weak to even taste the flavors.
I didn’t taste all of the flavors mentioned on the label, but the aftertaste lingers and you can taste some complexity from the ingredients which include ketchup, peach schnapps, coffee liquor, molasses, Dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, cocoa powder, and spices.
Pros
- Great subtle peach flavor
- Professional & classy looking label and appearance
- No artificial colors or flavors
- Very low sodium for a BBQ sauce
Cons
- A bit thin
- Ingredients include HFCS
- Doesn’t describe flavor on bottle
Bottom Line
Has the makings of a decent sauce. Try to be more descriptive. When branding a book by an unknown author, the words on the book are more important than the author to describe its contents. A book by Stephen King often has the Stephen King name as large as the title of the book. Newer books with newer authors often have the title of the book larger than the author name… The same is true in the BBQ sauce world. The Ruble Family name is not like Sweet Baby Ray’s or Open Pit or Bullseye (which are known and understood flavors). We need a bit more to tell us what’s in there. A peach on the label would be a start. Another approach would be to have the sauce itself called something like Ruble’s Drunken Peach BBQ sauce (and have a peach on the label too). That way, you tell people what you have so they have the right expectation when they get your sauce. Not many people shop by the ingredients list. Most are looking for either a price tag, something familiar, or something special to pop out at them. Since you can’t compete on price with the big guys, and you aren’t familiar yet… the only choice is to stand out and be the third option – something special / different.
Site Editor, BBQ Sauce Lover, Family Guy, Hi Tech Marketer by Day. He recently wrote the Ebook “How to Market Your BBQ Sauce” which can be purchased on this site.
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