Description
World Famous Head Country BBQ Sauce. Now available for home use. The year was 1945. Donovan Fred Head, known affectionately to everyone as “Uncle Bud,” was home from World War II and his service as a cook on a U.S. Navy destroyer. Getting back into the rhythms of Oklahoma ranch life felt good, but so did tinkering at the stove and recalling the recipes he served up to his fellow sailors. One such recipe was for a bar-b-q sauce that used simple and wholesome ingredients that were easy to find in a Navy ship’s kitchen: ketchup, brown sugar, distilled vinegar, Worcestershire sauce and spices. Uncle Bud’s recipe became known as “Head Country Bar-B-Q Sauce” and proved just as popular with the neighbors as it was with the sailors! So many neighbors made the trip to buy fruit jars of the stuff that Uncle Bud decided to make it easier on his adoring fans. Head Country went retail in feed stores. Through the years the family’s bar-b-q sauce recipe became increasingly popular Uncle Bud felt it was getting too much to handle out of his ranch house kitchen so he sold the recipe in 1977 to his nephew, Danny Head. Danny was himself a successful oilfield construction contractor, but he knew the sauce was too good to let go. After three years of juggling both the oilfield construction business and the bar-b-q sauce business, Danny had to make a choice between the two. As they say, timing is everything. Danny sold his oilfield construction business in 1980, just months before the oil boom went bust. From those proceeds he moved his family from Shidler, Oklahoma, to Ponca City and set up the bar-b-q sauce manufacturing plant in an old WWII Royal Air Force training barracks near the Ponca City Airport. It took more than five years for Head Country Food Products Inc. to make a profit. But Danny stuck to his dream, learned the grocery business and made it work.