Hooked on smoked
fish n
i r
NORTHEAST
REGION
niche cultural delicacy con-
ALEXANDRA ROWLEY
fined to the Northeast,” he
explains. “It’s mainstream—and
affordable. New customers are
discovering its outstanding fla-
vor, freshness and healthfulness.”
Acme retains strong core
appeal in the Big Apple, counting
among its A-list clients such
landmark eateries and stores as
Carnegie Deli, Shelsky’s, Zabar’s
and Barney Greengrass. Growth
is welcome, Caslow says, but his
family’s obligations go beyond
market share. “Our heritage and
tradition of quality are very
important to us,” he says. “For
more than 100 years we’ve made
amazing products, and that will
continue in the years ahead.”
Says Costco buyer Rachel
Moyer, “Acme has a great reputa-
tion in New York. People just love
their fish.”
Asked why Brownstein
named his company Acme,
Caslow chuckles. “Back in the
day, our competition began with
the letter ‘B.’ My great-grandfa-
ther wanted his company to
appear first in the telephone
book, so Acme it was.”
—Matthew Robb
Acme Smoked Fish Corporation
Brooklyn, NY
www.acmesmokedfish.com
Products: Various fish and spreads
under the Blue Hill Bay label
Available: Select warehouses in
most regions
RUSSIAN IMMIGRANT Harry
Brownstein began peddling
smoked fish from a horse-drawn
wagon in New York City circa
1906. Through fits and starts—
and 50 years of scrimping and
saving—he managed to open his
own smokehouse in 1954.
Today, more than a century
after Brownstein began his career,
business is booming, declares
David Caslow, Harry’s great-grandson and president of the
family-owned and -operated
enterprise. In the last 10 years
alone, sales have roughly doubled.
“Smoked fish is no longer a
Success
with zest
Using sweet potatoes was a
serendipitous fluke. “The idea of
sweet potatoes dawned on me
one day as I was just looking for a
way to thicken up the base,”
attests Skelton. “Almost 50 per-
cent of all the sweet potatoes
grown in the U.S. actually come
from North Carolina. For me it
was a no-brainer: What do I have
a lot of that I can thicken this stuff
up with? And it was like magic.”
After the sauce won a
national food award, Skelton
decided to get serious about the
product and set out to bottle it.
He came home one day to find
his wife, Caroline, pouring sauce
from his test bottle onto cheese
and crackers. She looked
up at him and said,
“Don’t mess with this
recipe. You’ve got it!”
a lot
SOUTHEAST
REGION
Cackalacky • Chapel Hill, NC
www.cackalacky.com
Product: Cackalacky Brand Spice
Sauce. Available: North Carolina
A FORMER GLOBAL service
manager for WorldCom,
Cackalacky founder
Page Skelton loves to
cook and barbecue in his
spare time. He did not
set out to create a commercial product. “I
started making this
sauce for my friends and
family, and they started
buying it from me in little Mason jars,” recalls
Tablet or
smartphone?
Watch a short
video on the
“making” of
Cackalacky.
Skelton. “And I started selling it
out of the trunk of my car.”
As for that name,
Cackalacky, it’s an old
slang term for the
Carolinas. At a barbecue,
one of his friends said,
“Hey, pass me some of
that Cackalacky sauce.”
Serendipity struck again
when Skelton was at a tasting
event sponsored by the North
Carolina Department of Agricul-
Page Skelton (center), with two members of his “Cackalacky Crew,” backed into the barbecue sauce business, and has no intention of backing out.
ture a few years ago. He met the
local Costco warehouse manager and told him the
Cackalacky story while the
manager tried a taste of plain
chicken topped with a dollop of
the sauce, a complex blend of 23
natural ingredients.
“I could just see it in his
eyes,” recalls Skelton. “The next
thing I knew I was surrounded
by a gaggle of Costco store man-
gers all happily munching away
on Cackalacky Spice Sauce sam-
ples and asking me lots of ques-
tions about my business. The
rest, as they say, is history.”
He adds, “I love sharing our
Costco success story with folks
because it’s a great example of
how the company actively strives
to be in tune with the local experi-
ence in the communities in which
they operate.”—Steve Fisher
