Getting Sauced: Meet the Family Behind Papoo’s BBQ Sauce

By Mason Edwards, The Chattanooga Times Free Press

Jack London knew at least one invariable fact about his fiancée, Elina Stikute: She hated barbecue sauce.

Not disliked. Hated. A level of revulsion born from years of sauces that were too vinegary, too mustardy, too smoky or too sweet, she says. But that changed the day she tried Papoo’s — a sauce named after Kevin’s father, Jack “Papoo” London, the nickname the grandkids call him.

“She couldn’t hide her smile,” Kevin says. “She took one bite and said, ‘This is really good.’ That’s when I knew we had something special.”

Now, Stikute drowns her grilled chicken salads in the stuff.

The couple met during the pandemic on a mobile phone game called Puzzles & Survival. What began with chat messages about fantasy books turned into a transatlantic romance — Stikute is from Latvia — and eventually, life together in Tennessee, where barbecue is serious business.

When they met, Kevin was a Microsoft employee, but he’s always wanted to go commercial with his dad’s barbecue sauce recipe. Jack, who’s a now-retired Certified Public Accountant, made the sauce 30 or 40 years ago. He picked the best flavors from multiple recipes and tweaked the mixture until he was satisfied.

“He would make it for ribs and cocktail weenies, just messing around with recipes he saw in books,” Kevin remembers. “It took him about a year to get it right, but once he did, people kept asking for it.”

When Kevin was laid off from Microsoft in January, it felt like the right time for a leap into the sauce market. He and Stikute launched Papoo’s Sauce as a small-batch, family-run business. They fulfill orders through Etsy and split the work equally. They bottle at high temperatures — around 250 degrees — and rely on natural preservatives like red wine vinegar and lemon juice to keep their sauces shelf-stable.

Papoo’s flavor is difficult to pin down in words. “It’s not Memphis-style, not Carolina or Texas either,” Kevin says. “It’s kind of a mix of all of them — sweet up front, with a little heat on the back end.” The sauce is smooth, thanks to puréed garlic and onions — “I hate chunks in sauce,” he adds — and comes in four flavors ranging from $10 to $11. There’s the mild Sweet, balanced Original, fiery Dragon’s Breath and the double-dog-dare-you-to-try-it Scorching Dragon.

They started selling at the World’s Longest Yard Sale, setting up on a stranger’s driveway. In one weekend, they moved nearly $1,000 worth of sauce. “A woman who made her own sauce in Louisiana told me she had the best,” Kevin says. “I convinced her to try ours, and after, her husband bought two bottles.”

Since then, they’ve worked more than 130 festivals across the Southeast, meeting fans who drive hours to restock. “You just have to taste it to understand,” Kevin adds. “We’ve sold it to 11 people who told me they hate barbecue sauce, and it changed their minds.”

The couple estimates they’ve sold 10,000 bottles since launching, earning $40,000 to $50,000 annually. They hand-label every bottle, built a website and acquired a Universal Product Code (UPC) to meet retail standards. “Kevin’s gotten artists from all over the world to help,” Jack says. “Now, he’s got T-shirts, labels, a whole brand, and the face on the label looks better than my real one.”

Despite high shipping costs — glass is heavy, and they refuse to compromise the taste by switching to plastic — they’ve shipped orders to California, Illinois, Florida and beyond. Locally, Papoo’s is stocked at the Funky Monkey in Northgate Mall and the Feed Store in Flintstone, Georgia, but there are more deals planned.

They have goals for growth: “I don’t know if it’s going to be two years, five years, 10 years,” Kevin says. “But somewhere between $600,000 and $1 million in sales would let us go full-time.” But he is respecting Stikute’s wishes — she sees the product as a family legacy — so they intend on scaling up in slow, deliberate steps.

“I’ve had people tell me we should go on ‘Shark Tank,’” Kevin says. “We’re not looking to sell out.”

They’re expanding the line with sugar-free sauces and dry rubs. And between weekend festivals and shipping orders, they’re writing their third fantasy novel together.

That family-first ethos shows up in everything — from bottling together to dreaming about passing the business down to their children. Kevin recently proposed, and while they haven’t set a wedding date yet, they’re building their future, one small batch at a time.

And it all started with a single, reluctant taste.

Sauce up your day by visiting londonfamilybbq.com.