11 Sweet Baby Ray's Facts We Bet You've Never Heard Before

Whether you're a fan of the sauce, the restaurant, or both, there's a lot about Sweet Baby Ray's you likely don't know. Sure, you can find part of the Sweet Baby Ray's story on the company's websites and on the back of Sweet Baby Ray's sauces. However, that only scratches the surface of the full story behind this American barbecue sauce that the U.S. has come to love over the past few decades.

These days, Sweet Baby Ray's is ranked among the best barbecue sauces, but the process of getting to that point is a story worth telling. What started with a barbecue ribs competition in the 1980s has grown into a multi-million-dollar operation over the years. The ownership of the different aspects of Sweet Baby Ray's has shifted in the best possible way. It's not just a story of business success as much as it's a story of people doing what they love and using it to make the world a better place. If Sweet Baby Ray's isn't a favorite yet, it likely will be once you know more about it. So, sit back and immerse yourself in facts about Sweet Baby Ray's sauces, restaurant, and other endeavors.

If you're a label reader, you've likely already read that Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce got its start in 1985 in Chicago. However, you may not have heard the whole story behind it.

The whole thing started in 1982 when Dave Raymond was a pharmacy buyer for nursing homes and was having a discussion with a salesman about which of the two made the best ribs. The salesman convinced Raymond to enter Mike Royko's Rib Fest that year. The first year, Dave entered alone, but his brother Larry Raymond joined him the next year. However, Larry was running a restaurant and created the sauce that Dave used for the first competition. It took four competitions before the team and the sauce finally got the attention they deserved. A total of 700 people entered the competition that year, and the Raymond brothers came in second place. However, second place was enough to give them hope for their success. By 1986, they decided to bottle and sell the sauce as a business.

If you're like us, you're probably wondering what became of the first-place winner in the competition. The first-place prize went to Charlie Robinson, who used a 200-year-old family recipe to win. He went on to open a barbecue restaurant that's still in business called Robinson's No. 1 Ribs in Oak Park, Illinois. Dave stayed in touch with him over the years since they were both in the Chicago food business.

The Raymond brothers gave away a lot of sauce before their brand became a household name. In the earliest years, both brothers still worked their day jobs, with no idea just how popular their barbecue sauce would one day become.

In the very first years of the sauce's existence, the brothers gave it away to friends and relatives rather than sell it. At Christmas, they'd gift bottles of barbecue sauce like others would gift homemade cookies. Little did those early recipients know that they were getting sauce that would become a legend, but they certainly spurred on the brothers' confidence by quickly draining the bottle and asking for more.

Once the brothers decided to turn their sauce into a business, their gifting trend continued as a part of their business plan. Back in 1990, when the sauce was still unknown to the masses, you could find Dave Raymond out grilling in grocery store parking lots. He'd grill up 20 to 30 pounds of meat, slather it with Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce, and serve some up to anyone who wanted a sample, along with recipes. And he wouldn't leave until he'd given away all his sauce. The company used these types of parking lot cookouts, in-store demos, appearances at small food festivals, and catered events to help get people interested in the sauce. Samplers who loved the sauce could then buy it at local grocery stores with the coupons or using half-dollar coins they received at sampling events.

Back when Dave and Larry Raymond were kids living in Chicago's West Side, they played a lot of basketball outside. And the name of Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue has its origins on those outdoor basketball courts.

Since they were playing basketball with older kids, Larry ended up with the nickname Ray, while his younger brother Dave got the nickname Baby Ray, playing off their last names. Dave was not only younger than Larry, but he was about 100 pounds smaller. However, the nickname Baby Ray wasn't just because he was the younger and smaller of the two Raymond brothers. He told Meat America Podcast that another reason for the nickname was because "I'd grown accustomed to having my way, and I can be a big baby if I don't." So, the nickname had a double meaning, based on both his childhood size and disposition.

But the nickname morphed. To impress the older boys they were playing ball with, the two brothers would try using fancy moves during their layup drills. According to Dave (via YouTube), one particular move he did resulted in one of the older boys saying, "That's sweet, Baby Ray," and the nickname Sweet Baby Ray stuck.

The heat component of the original formulation of Sweet Baby Ray's is part of the key to its success. Rather than source specific peppers for the sauce, Larry Raymond decided to use a hot sauce that was already on the market.

Larry Raymond initially developed Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce by interviewing chefs and deciding that the best sauce should be sweet, hot, and smoky. He worked to create a sauce that would enhance the flavor of the meat it was used on so that the meat flavor was still prominent without the sauce drowning it out, leading to a more balanced flavor experience. And the heat is part of that balance.

The heat in the sauce comes from McIlhenny Co. Tabasco Pepper Sauce instead of cheaper ingredients like cayenne. Tabasco got its start in Louisiana all the way back in 1868. It's a vinegar-centric, barrel-aged hot sauce that relies on specific types of peppers for its heat. The original Tabasco sauce has a Scoville rating of 2,500-5,000. With the Scoville Scale measuring just how hot something is, it puts Tabasco in the mild-hot range. Tabasco is the heat-giver in Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce, and the sauce has the distinction of being the most fiery when you use it straight out of the bottle for dipping. However, if you heat it before using it or cook it on your food, the heat dissipates somewhat.

Over the years, Sweet Baby Ray's has branched out from barbecue sauce to a variety of other types of flavorful sauces. As of 2024, there are 10 types of barbecue sauce, 15 types of wing and marinade sauce, five types of dipping sauce, and five types of hot sauce. However, two of the sauces make up the most of the sales.

Sweet Baby Ray's is extremely popular. In a 2022 survey by Mashed, nearly 49% of its 605 respondents chose Sweet Baby Ray's as their favorite barbecue sauce, with Jack Daniel's being its closest competitor with just a little over 15% of the vote. However, when it comes to which Sweet Baby Ray's sauces the masses are buying, customers have two favorites: the Sweet Baby Ray's Original Barbecue Sauce and the Sweet Baby Ray's Sweet 'N Spicy Barbecue Sauce.

However, if you visit the Sweet Baby Ray's restaurant, you can try made-from-scratch sauces you may not find in stores. For example, you might find Kansas City Barbecue Sauce or Texas Barbecue Sauce. Also, in the restaurant, you can find Duce Raymond's BBQ sauce brand, Duce's Wild, with flavors like Duce's Wild Competition Barbecue Sauce available by the bottle.

While free in-person samples were once a part of the marketing strategy for Sweet Baby Ray's, it was a lot of work and took a lot of time. Eventually, the sampling marketing strategy gave way to using a broker network, which was much easier and less time-consuming. However, that doesn't mean that you can't still get free samples.

Ken's foods still offers samples of Sweet Baby Ray's sauces if you know where to look. The company has a form you can fill out online to get samples delivered right to your door, though the samples seem to be aimed at businesses, including home businesses who currently buy or are interested in buying Sweet Baby Ray's sauces. While there's a drop-down option for regular consumers, the form requires listing your title, company name, website, number of locations, operator segment, and distributor. So, it doesn't seem like it has the average consumer in mind for its free samples.

The form allows you to choose between six barbecue sauces, 14 wing sauces, two hot sauces, and one dipping sauce. Luckily, you don't have to choose just one since you're allowed to pick multiples.

Sweet Baby Rays began with just a $2,000 investment in 1986. It started as a partnership between the Raymond brothers (Dave and Larry) and a friend named Mike O'Brien, who took care of the accounting and paperwork side of the business. Within 30 years, it was worth $560 million. By 2019, it was worth $600 million.

The brand's growth has been meteoric despite its humble beginnings. "I know it's too sweet and the texture is too thick, but I turned a $2,000 investment into 21% total market share," Dave Raymond told Food Republic in 2015. "Not bad for a white boy selling barbecue."

The original team wouldn't keep the barbecue sauce side of the business forever. Eventually, they sold the barbecue sauce part of the business to Ken's in 2003. Ken's started out as Ken's Steak House in 1941, but today, it sells a variety of dressings and sauces (like its high-ranking Italian salad dressing).

From the beginning of the life of Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce, rather than trying to bottle it themselves, the company decided to use a Chicago sauce manufacturer to do it for them. However, there were still more sauce-related decisions to make, and Dave Raymond was more interested in running a restaurant. He told Food Republic, "If you like making sauce, don't get into the sauce business. You have to wear too many hats to actually cook anymore." Thus, letting go of the barbecue sauce side of the business freed the original owners to do other things with the Sweet Baby Ray's name. Plus, Ken's agreed to send the original owners around 100 free cases of barbecue sauce each year to sweeten the deal.

When Ken's bought the sauce, Sweet Baby Ray's was worth over $30 million. In just over two decades, under Ken's, Sweet Baby Rays ballooned into a $560 million brand with over 46% market share by 2021. The name remained, even more customers began enjoying it, and the original owners could move on to the parts of the barbecue business they enjoyed more.

When the original owners of Sweet Baby Rays decided to sell their barbecue sauce to Ken's, they negotiated a deal that allowed them to continue to use the sauce in any restaurant or catering services they decided to start. So, they essentially got to keep their sauce without dealing with the sauce-selling business.

Around the time that the original owners sold their sauce to Ken's, Larry "Duce" Raymond, Larry Raymond's son, was staying with his uncle, Dave Raymond, while going to culinary school. They started buying big smokers and having people over to cook meats, making sauces for them to taste. Those backyard barbecues brought back the original joy of the barbecue sauce experience. So, the two decided to open up a small, 36-seat barbecue restaurant together in Wood Dale, Illinois, in 2005. There were once multiple locations, with the one in Elk Grove Village closing permanently in 2022. That only leaving the original, Sweet Baby Ray's Barbecue Wood Dale, open. It serves wings, nachos, salads, burgers, barbecue sandwiches, ribs, barbecue meat platters and plates, sides, and desserts.

With the restaurant getting lots of catering requests, it ended up opening up separate catering services. Sweet Baby Ray's Catering has different menus for different events, including an elaborate wedding catering menu, and menus for picnics, corporate events, and other special events. Customers especially like to order the Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue fondue station for their events. They also opened up a second catering company called True Cuisine, which has fancier cuisine than just barbecue. They also have a food trailer that people can rent to cater for special events.

A barbecue competition is what got Sweet Baby Ray's started in the first place, and that whole experience is still a passion for Dave Raymond and his nephew Duce Raymond. They've been back in the barbecue competition business since about 2014 under the name Duce's Wild, competing in events like the Kansas City Barbecue Society Barbecue Competition and many others. The team has barbecued its way to winning over 40 awards over the years.

While having a great barbecue sauce certainly plays a role in helping to win barbecue competitions. There's also an art to picking just the right slab of meat for competition. The team likes to use ribs from duroc pigs, like ones it can get from Compart Family Farms. They look for ribs with the right thickness and right level of marbling to cook up in a way that will earn the judges' attention. Duroc pork is known for its marbling, which helps make it moist and juicy. Plus, it has a lot of flavor. They also barbecue brisket. One choice brisket they like to use comes from Snake River Farms and is fairly expensive at about $240.

Both Duce and Dave Raymond like to barbecue to give back to the community. So, one thing that sets Sweet Baby Ray's restaurant apart is how much it gives to charity. In The Duce Raymond Podcast, Duce gushes about just how much Dave gives. He says, "All the things that he's done helps inspire ... not just from a business standpoint but just to be a better person."

There's a myriad of things that they're involved in, often giving away food to charities like Tim's Ministries or using barbecue to get others to give. Duce says that Dave sometimes makes an appearance in the restaurant's kitchen just to grab some food that he can take to charity that's helping feed hungry people. They tend to throw various charity dinners each year, with proceeds going to a variety of organizations with different needs. They've even auctioned off private dinners. Some of the charities they've been involved with helping include Make a Wish Chicago, the Jimmie Johnson Foundation, Chicago Cares, and many others.

Having grown up in the inner city, Dave is especially keen to help kids in inner city communities. Again, they tend to be food-centric. For example, in 2008, a North Lawndale, Illinois, pastor contacted Dave Raymond to get involved in fundraising to make a kitchen for inner city kids with a smoker. Whatever he does is in the hopes of helping to make the world a better place.