Ronnie Childs' barbecue sauce recipe took 10 years to perfect.
It took more than 35 years to make it to tables outside the circle of his family and friends.
At his family's behest, Childs' treasured recipe is now being marketed and sold in local stores as RC's Finest BBQ Sauce. But it started as simple as his desire to better enjoy his barbecue.
"I used to buy the regular barbecue sauce, but it would always overpower the meat. So I said, "I want to come up with a light barbecue sauce where the flavor will enhance the meat and let you taste the meat,'" said Childs, now in his 70s. "I've been around barbecue for a long time."
Perfecting the recipe was not such a simple process, which is why it took Childs about a decade to produce a consistent good taste in gallon quantities.
"I would make a batch, and I would say, "This is what I want.' But I didn't write it down. Then when I would make another batch, it would taste like medicine," he said.
Luckily, Childs has had plenty of taste-testers over the years at company picnics, church barbecues and in his own kitchen.
"If you talk to my wife, she'll tell you I didn't mind making a mess but I hated to clean it up," he laughed. "I really enjoyed making it. It was just a hobby for me, and people was enjoying it. They really liked it."
So when members of his family approached him several years ago about taking his special sauce to market, Childs had to decide whether he wanted to sacrifice control over his creation for more people to enjoy it. He and his family run the business themselves, though, between his home in Jefferson City and his daughter's in Atlanta.
"As he was getting older, we realized we need to get the recipe. It was all in his head; he didn't write it down," said Ashley Thornton, Childs' granddaughter who handles the marketing and public relations for RC's Finest BBQ Sauce from her home in Kansas City. "He couldn't keep up with demand from folks in Kansas City who really liked it; we have family in St. Louis. You can't make 3, 4, 5 gallons in your house."
Thornton recalled her grandfather's initial hesitation to give up his one-man show in the Childs kitchen - "He wasn't going to be able to make it anymore himself," she said. "Once you go to market and you go through getting approval, you can no longer make it."
"I really hated to give that up, making it. ... That's the way it is. It came at a good time, too, because I had just had back surgery," Childs said. "I can't make it for friends any more because that would take away from the business. I go buy my own sauce now."
But as the recipe was developed from its 1-gallon yield to produce 40 gallons at a time, Childs retained the final seal of approval on the product's taste.
"When you start mass-producing it, sometimes it can lose its taste," he said. "We had to do it a couple times before we finally got it right. Now it's pretty much the way I used to make it."
Now he'll be leaving messes in the kitchen as he develops new flavors in addition to the current "Classic Mild" and "Classic Hot," - possibly a honey barbecue or an even spicier option - plus a new barbecue rub.
"I thought I was just going to be free now, but they want me to come up with other products," Childs laughed.
The family business began selling RC's Finest BBQ Sauce at Schulte's Fresh Foods in Jefferson City and the local Hy-Vee grocery store this past May and made it available on Amazon.com in August. They're considering expanding to the Columbia market next, Thornton said.
While Thornton more conservatively called it a "versatile sauce," her grandfather recommends using it adventurously.
"There's different things you can use it for because it is a light sauce," Childs said. "It's good not only for barbecue; it's a good sauce to even put it in baked beans and used it in a stir-fry."