Had I been standing in a grocery store, intending to choose one bottle of barbeque sauce that I would like from the five shelves of barbeque sauces displayed, I never would have guessed that this one would be so good.

I found the bottle on the kitchen counter one morning as I was preparing to leave for work. One of my family had arrived the night before and (I assumed, due to the specific location of the bottle on the kitchen counter) had left this as a gift for me.

“Jim’s Own Sauce.” I read the yellow label featuring a smiling pig with a top hat. Barbeque sauce. Made in North Carolina.

I enjoy barbeque sauce (excluding mayonnaise-based sauces… can’t tolerate ‘em). Since I’m an intermittent carnivore, I (please don’t feel disgusted) enjoy barbeque sauces on vegetables and as snacks straight out of the bottle – a couple of tablespoons of room-temperature barbeque sauce mid-morning or mid-afternoon can straighten a guy’s day out pretty good, considering….

Desperate for a little pick-me-up a couple of nights later, I opened the bottle and poured about a quarter-cup into a small glass and left it to reach room temperature. That achieved, I drew about half of it into my mouth.

Hitting my tongue, the sauce felt viscous but not runny. It opened up immediately with a little bit of heat, followed by a bit of sweetness, punctuated with little floating round things that tickled my tongue and that, when I bit on one or two of them, popped like small balloons and added a mustard-sweet flavor to the mix.

“WOW” was the only word that came to mind.

Left to my own devices to choose a sauce from the five shelves of potential barbeque sauce providers, how would I have picked this one? The anthropomorphic pig on the label? The sauce color?  Possibly. 

But, more likely,  I would not have spied or chosen this particular sauce from among the many.

My family member’s personal introduction made all the difference.

Nick Miller is President of Clarity Advantage based in Concord, MA. He assists banks and credit unions to generate more and more profitable relationships, faster, with business clients, their owners, and their employees. Additional articles on Clarity’s web site.