Get a Taste of Freshly-Picked Fruits and Vegetables With Redneck Foods

Dan Bristow says he’s always liked to cook. “The fact of the matter is, I like to eat. And I’ve been called particular, but I just like good food!”

- Susan Marquez

After breaking his back during a serious car accident four years ago, Bristow was sidelined from his job in construction. “I was bored out of my gourd, and I started going through recipes collected by my mother, grandmother, and aunts. I decided to cook for my family.” He set up a makeshift kitchen in his garage and worked on a salsa recipe. “I used my mom’s recipe and combined it with another recipe and came up with a signature salsa.”

His family loved the salsa, so he decided to give a jar to his friend who worked with Super Junior stores in Vicksburg. “I went back a few days later, and he raved over the salsa. He said he wanted five or six jars to see if it would sell in his store. Lucky for me, it sold like crazy!”

Knowing he was on to something, Bristow went to work, making enough salsa to fill 600 jars. “I go to the Wildlife Extravaganza in Jackson each year, so I took my salsa and started sampling it there. I sold it for $10 a jar. A guy gave me his card and told me to make an appointment to talk with him. I was so busy sampling salsa, I put his card in my pocket and forgot about it.”

When he returned home, Bristow remembered the business card and was surprised to see it was from Chuck Head, District Manager of Kroger. “I called him Monday morning, we met on Tuesday, and it wasn’t long before our products were in all the Kroger stores in the Delta District, which includes areas from Paducah, Ky., to Memphis, Tenn., to Jackson, Miss., to Little Rock, Ark.