Even Mick Jagger had to try it.
“I sucked down some pimento cheese,” he told thousands of fans at Bank of America Stadium when the Rolling Stones played in Charlotte late last year. The 78-year-old tasted the delicacy sometime before or after his much-publicized visit to the Queen City’s Thirsty Beaver Saloon.
Why wouldn’t Jagger order up some pimento cheese? He’s a rock star, not living under a rock. Pimento cheese has appeared on more menus and supermarket shelves in recent years. It’s not just for picnic sandwiches and bridge games anymore, nor is it just a Southern dip.
Rather, it’s a cash crop for North Carolina entrepreneurs who are creating distinctive variations of grated cheese melded with mayonnaise to create a staple in refrigerators from coast to coast.
“Pimento cheese has been thought of as a regional peculiarity for so long, but it’s something that has taken hold all over,” says John Morgan, CEO of Queen Charlotte’s Pimento Cheese Royale. The Charlotte business still sells most of its product in the South but also cites success in Massachusetts, Ohio and nearly two dozen other states.
Morgan and four employees make 7,000 10-ounce containers of pimento cheese each week at a 6,000-square-foot warehouse in Charlotte. His repertoire includes original, jalapeno, blue cheese and bacon varieties.
“It’s like mass psychosis,” he says.”Anybody who tries it — it doesn’t matter where they are from — they realize it’s good.”
Dr. Cheryl Barnett, CEO of Greensboro-based MyThreeSons Gourmet, also benefits from national demand for her pimento cheese, which comes in original, spicy white cheddar and jalapeno flavors. Small shops and large supermarkets carry the brand in 20 states.
“It’s in Whole Foods in Hawaii, believe it or not,” says Barnett, who is the mother of three sons. “My son was skiing in Sun Valley, Idaho, and it was for sale there. It’s also made it to Big Sky, Montana.”
A great product is only the beginning for success, of course. Repeat production with continuous quality, coupled with increased demand, are essential.
Owners of three N.C. pimento cheese companies — an art teacher, an orthodontist and a caterer — started their businesses for different reasons but share similar stories of countless taste tests with friends and family, then hundreds of cold calls to retailers and subsequent sampling events.
Queen Charlotte’s Morgan has always loved cooking, but he didn’t enjoy pimento cheese as a youth. Things changed when he tinkered with his own recipe while in college. Later as an art teacher in Union County, he started making big batches of pimento cheese for friends, holidays and Super Bowl parties.
“I took some of the things I didn’t like about it, when it was too mayonnaise-y, and when it got completely pulverized into a homogeneous spread, and I turned them on their head.”
For kicks, he landed a spot on the Jeopardy TV show in 2014. He was leading a five-day defending champion heading into the last question, which was in the category of museums. “I teach art. I looked at my friends in the audience like: ‘I’ve got this.’”
Had he known Belfast was the home to a Titanic museum, he might not have ended up in the pimento cheese business. But the Final Jeopardy clue was vague. Another player had visited the Irish venue and won.
“I ended up winning a couple thousand bucks. If I’d won any more than that, I probably wouldn’t have been so smart with it,” Morgan says. “I got enough money to buy a 30-quart mixer and I was off to the races.”
A year later, he quit his job to focus on Queen Charlotte’s. His major breaks were getting rights to supply 140 Food Lion stores in 2017, followed the next year by a deal with Harris Teeter. “We started in a few stores in March 2018 and by the end of 2018, we were in the full Charlotte market.” By 2020, 200 Harris Teeter stores were offering the product.
Attending hundreds of food trade shows, holiday shows and women’s shows had paid off. “I’m not afraid to make a cold call,” Morgan attests. “We sent samples to every buyer, to every distributor. If they haven’t heard of us, it’s because they haven’t opened their email in a while.”
COVID-19 slowed growth but also made Queen Charlotte’s smarter and leaner. Last year’s final quarter was the company’s best ever. The product is now rolling out in hundreds of Kroger stores as far west as Texas.
“I’m really proud of the efficiencies we’ve made, that we can do all this with four people,” Morgan says. “We definitely have this (Great) Depression mentality. We’ve learned to survive without a lot. We started out not knowing anything about this business; then we had a once-in-a-century pandemic that’s still not over. We are penny-pinchers, and we run a tight ship.”
To read the stories of other successful startups across the state, click here.
