Most holidays are associated with a food.
Turkey is for Thanksgiving, ham is for Easter and Valentine’s Day is all about chocolate.
Super Bowl Sunday isn’t an official national holiday, but it’s treated by many people as such, with family and friends gathering each February to celebrate the final game of the NFL season.
It’s estimated that Super Bowl fans will consume more than 30 million pounds of potato and tortilla chips before, during and after the game and many of those chips will first be dragged through a dip of some sort.
That common accoutrement to the chip is the genesis of a business for Sherry and Mitch Lyford, owners and operators of Dips2go.com and the River City Gourmet Shoppe at the Landing Downtown.
It started several years ago when the Lyfords wanted to send family members some dip mixes for holiday stocking stuffers. The ingredients were tasty, but Sherry didn’t care for the frilly, country store-style containers.
“I didn’t like all the gingham, so I repackaged them. Then I decided I could make the dips, too,” she said.
After coming up with a few recipes that were liked by family and friends, it was time to test the retail market. The Lyfords made some dip mixes and rented a booth at a local craft fair.
It didn’t take long to realize they had a hit on their hands.
“We sold half of what we had by 10:30 the first morning,” Sherry said.
That experience led to a website, Dips2go.com, and that led to a retail store at the Landing when the Lyfords cut the ribbon last August to open River City Gourmet Shoppe.
In addition to their dip mixes, they also sell grilling rubs, sauces, marinades, glazes and soup mixes. They formulate some themselves and the rest are selected from other culinary entrepreneurs.
Last month, they moved the store into a space four times as large at the other end of the Landing. The new layout includes a catering kitchen used for blending and packaging their products in addition to offering more retail space.
“We’ve gone from making the mixes one scoop at a time to making hundreds of pounds,” said Mitch.
The Lyfords always are looking for new products to offer in the retail store and experimenting with new flavors of dip and rub mixes. Plans include the addition of a selection of wines, cheeses and fresh handmade pasta.
“It will be like an Italian deli,” said Sherry.
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