
Why is Stubbs BBQ sauce for sale in a Prague grocery store? - Thevet
https://thinkinginpublic.org/story/why-on-earth-is-stubbs-bbq-sauce-for-sale-in-a-prague-grocery-store/
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johnnyletrois
My wife is Swedish and her family live in Sweden, but we live in the US. Every
year we ask them what they want us to bring them when we make our annual
pilgrimage to the homeland. My brother in law wanted bbq sauce, so my wife
bought six bottles of sweet baby rays sauce. She took a photo of the bottles
and sent it to him. He laughed because sweet baby rays is available in Sweden
at a lot of the grocery stores. So she went back to the store and bought six
bottles of Stubbs. On our last day in Stockholm I was at the grocery store and
saw a new display for Stubbs. Can't win.

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hinkley
Rufus Teague made some sauce. Pretty good, I like it better than Stubbs, and
still obscure enough they might not have seen it.

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hinkley
Also, I think you could kill a bear with the bottle, so it might ship well.

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monocasa
I met one of their sales reps back in 2004 when I was working at a faux high
end grocery store. Easily the highest pressure sales I had seen at that level,
the guy would have sold his first born for a week of endcap space. If that was
indicative of their sales culture, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a
shelf with it on the moon at this point.

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jt2190
Like the Czechs of central Texas, my ancestors started immigrating to the U.S.
from Bohemia almost immediately after the 1848 Revolution [1] resulted in the
elimination of feudalism in Austria.

That's a long enough time ago that there was effectively no "conversation"
left between my immigrant family and the (few) who stayed behind and somehow
managed to survive. Thus I'm a little skeptical that the use of Stubb's BBQ
sauce in today's Czech republic is the result of a direct conversation between
the immigrant population and the native one.

Instead, I suspect instead that Czechs and Americans today have more access to
each other's cultures due to the fall of the Soviet Union, and increased
globalism. Stubb's has been widely distributed in the U.S. for decades, and in
Europe for quite some time, so it's not really surprising that it would make
its way to the Czech republic.

Funnily enough, a _new_ conversation may now be starting. My great-uncle-once-
removed started using Facebook a few years ago to find long-lost relatives in
the U.S., and has managed to find one or two in the Czech republic. (Still,
almost all of us are in the U.S... World War One was not kind to those who
stayed behind.)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848)

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lazerwalker
This is super interesting!

I wonder if there's a clear trend or explanation for Czech-Texans moving
(back?) to the Czech Republic? This does a great job of explaining a
connection between Czech culture and Texas BBQ in Texas, but not how that
leads to BBQ sauce hopping back across the Atlantic.

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notfromhere
Quality of life greatly improved since post-Soviet days. Plus, if money isn't
an issue Czechland wins over Texas any day

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geggam
reminds me of this quote

“If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell”

― Philip Henry Sheridan

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owlninja
“You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.”

-Davy Crockett

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peterwwillis
Prague is the largest city in Czechia, a cultural and international hot spot,
with a large student and foreign population. I'd guess this grocery store was
in Zizkov.

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ryanlol
You can get Stubbs all over Europe.

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nhf
Yeah. Stubbs sauce was produced in Texas for a long time but they were bought
by McCormick* (the spice company) a few years ago. They have the same global
distribution powers of any other large commercial food business, so I'm sure
they could get Stubbs in whatever country they forecast good demand.

* [https://www.wsj.com/articles/mccormick-buys-stubbs-sauce-mak...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/mccormick-buys-stubbs-sauce-maker-for-100-million-1435144894)

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hodgesrm
For a large company their sauce is pretty good. We eat it all the time.
McCormick seems to have treated it well.

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kodablah
For a (somewhat) large company, McCormick maintains the quality of many
products they make.

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SmellTheGlove
Probably the same reason we can get Nutella in basically every US grocery
store? Stubbs was sold in Costco 2-packs dating back to at least my college
years, so it's not exactly a boutique brand.

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adam-a
Perhaps it's a little less mystifying if you consider that Budweiser is a
Czech beer. There have been strong culinary ties between the US and the Czech
Republic for a long time.

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mattkrause
Nope—same name but different breweries.
[http://business.time.com/2014/01/27/where-a-budweiser-
isnt-a...](http://business.time.com/2014/01/27/where-a-budweiser-isnt-allowed-
to-be-a-budweiser/)

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dublin
That's a really good question. I grew up in Austin, and while Stubb's isn't
bad, I wouldn't consider it a top-tier Texas BBQ sauce. It's popular primarily
because it's associated with a popular tourist music venue in Austin. I'm
guessing it's a reverse transfer because the significant number of Eastern
European immigrants in parts of South/Central Texas.

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thecopy
There is the same sauce at Coop in Switzerland.

