Page 26 - Barbecue News Magazine May 2022

Sean Ludwig -
sean@nycbbq.com
Ryan Cooper -
ryan@bbqtourist.com
How Bachan’s Japanese BBQ Sauce Honors Family Tradition
Any barbecue or grilling enthusiast who has spent time on social media in the last few years has likely come across content using Bachan’s Japanese Barbecue Sauce. Last year I first decided to give it a try when some of my favorite Instagram accounts started regularly sharing recipes using the sauce.
Once I ordered my first set of Bachan’s sauces, I could not get enough of them and a few weeks later, I ordered another batch to give away to all of my friends. In no time I developed several recipes using this versatile and flavorful sauce.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with Justin Gill, founder of Bachan’s Japanese Barbecue Sauce, to learn more about the story behind the brand, how the sauce recipe was developed, and more. This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
The Smoke Sheet: Can you give a little background on Bachan’s sauce?
Justin Gill: We’ve had our sauce in our family for multiple genera- tions. Bachan is a Japanese American term of endearment for grandmother or granny. My Bachan is who taught my parents how to make our sauce and every year since I was a young kid, we’d get together during the holidays and make a big batch in a kettle. We would hand bottle it and deliver it to clients of our family land- scaping business. Every year people would just be waiting for it to show up and would just be so excited. After every holiday season people would show up at our office with empty bottles and they would want to buy some sauce or buy the recipe. I just saw the high demand for the product since we had this heirloom family sauce. I just kind of tucked that in the back of my mind that I’d like to bring that sauce to market someday. I was kind of an entrepre- neurial kid.
TSS: How did you get started in founding the company?
JG: I had a clothing line and that was going really well, but then the recession hit in 2009 and I ended up having to shut that busi- ness down. I went back to doing landscape design and consulting and things that I'd done in the past. Fast forward to 2013, we had this beach house and I was thinking, “I want to get back to doing entrepreneurial things.” The whole weekend we were eating something with this sauce so I thought, “Okay, I want to bring this to market.” I was sitting with my Bachan and thinking about what we should call it. Then I thought ‘Bachan’s’...that would be awe- some. I looked up the name and sure enough, it was available. I bought up every form of the domain name.
TSS: How did you end up taking your family sauce recipe and making it on a commercial scale?
JG: I started talking to formulators and co-packers in Northern California. I had zero experience in the food and beverage indus- try. When you are starting a new brand, they don’t take you seri- ously at all. Luckily, the sample that I had was a really good sample, so that kind of got
me in the door. Every single one of them told me that to commercialize the recipe, you have to pasteurize it. They said, “You’re gonna need to add water to it. Your ingredients are expensive.” I took what they told me, went home, and tried it. It just changed everything about the sauce. The flavor profile, the nose, the mouthfeel, everything. I noticed that the number one ingredient for 95% of the sauces on the shelves was water. People add water first and then add all the other ingredients. The top sauces like Tabasco, A1, Huy Fong Sriracha, and other iconic legacy brands didn’t do that. I had to figure out how to not pasteurize the sauce. It took me a cou- ple of years to figure out. I think I did 47 different varia- tions of our formulation. Once I could make it shelf- stable, I knew I had some- thing.
Justin Gill is the founder of Bachan’s Japanese BBQ Sauce, based in Sebastopol, California. (Photo courtesy of Bachan’s)
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