But why, when I could just go to the store and get another bottle of Cavender’s?ġ3 spices go into Cavender’s blend, but the proportions are a family secret. I could spend a lifetime attempting to recreate the recipe. I could smell notes of this and that and thought to myself is that parsley? Surely that’s paprika… oh, I can smell cumin and anise and… but it didn’t matter. Because of the way they come to us, the mix will last forever.” “We get our spices in every week, they’re going to be fresh. “It’s fresh,” I responded, almost bowled over by the concentration. “This one’s not quite full,” she admitted. She opened up one of the big tubs and let us take a photograph down into it. I already knew what it looked like on my shelf and on my steak, but I nodded anyway. “Do you want to see what it looks like?” Cara asked me. I have friends in Great Britain who use it, had one friend sight it in Jerusalem and another in Sydney, Australia.
![spike seasoning history spike seasoning history](https://images.inventorysource.com/images/hg/HG0303404.jpg)
![spike seasoning history spike seasoning history](http://omkarvanaspati.com/images/pics/639953803_1392715087.jpg)
I even encountered it in a grocery store in Freeport, Bahamas. I’ve seen it on a table in Boston, in a spice bin in Phoenix and on a window ledge in St. It’s distributed all over the nation through Wal-Mart and Kroger and who-all knows else. It’s earned a reputation for being the best secret ingredient in so many things - burgers, steaks, ribs, barbecue sauce, chili, whatever. Well, it works because Cavender’s is that good. We’ll process four to five tons of seasoning every day.”Ī little quick math - five days a week, 50 weeks a year (they take off during the holidays, do doubt) - you’re looking at, at least a thousand tons of seasoning prepared every year. Cara and her sister Lisa Cavender Price now run the company, along with their husbands and several longtime employees. Spike and his son Stephen created the S-C Seasoning Company back in 1971. Eventually it was renamed Cavender’s Greek Seasoning because of a trademark issue. Spike Cavender took that recipe and made it up with a friend from Oklahoma - not to sell, but to give away to friends. Her grandfather had a friend in the restaurant business who was dying who passed this specific spice recipe along. She shared it with us as we looked around. “A little,” I admitted, curious to hear her take on it. It smelled comfortable and almost heavenly.Ĭara didn’t seem to have the slightest qualm about sharing the behind-the-scenes tour with a couple of strangers. The scent immediately cleared my sinuses and simultaneously made my stomach growl. We went through one doorway into a break room and then a second one, a warehouse operation with filling machines. We really hadn’t introduced ourselves, yet here she was offering to show us what went on behind the scenes. Still, I was surprised by how open Cara was about the operation. Once again, I regretted not calling in advance.
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I asked a few questions about the operation and she offered to show it to me, with the caveat that the men who worked the line were gone to lunch. She introduced herself as Cara… later we’d find out she’s Cara Cavender Wohlgemuth, a member of the third generation of the Cavender’s family. She fetched another woman to come meet us. She looked a little panicked, and I realized it might have been much more wise to have called first. I do believe the receptionist was taken off guard when I walked in and asked her if she could tell me all about the place. Meandered over that way to take a gander. I had a couple hours between one assignment and another in the area on a Monday morning and had heard from the folks at the Hotel Seville (which has Cavender’s up for sale in its lobby) that the headquarters was located over on Industrial Park Road. So finding out that I was just a few miles from the place where Cavender’s is produced, I just had to go. Because of my frequent dining out (a necessary job hazard) we don’t go through a bottle as quickly as we once did, but we were averaging at one time a new bottle every three to five months. We still use Cavender’s at Chez Robinson.