Holiday Deli & Ham Co. began in a stack of papers.
It was the early ’90s when Don “Papa” Jordan, who owned a local
Wendy’s franchise, approached his son Trey about getting into business
together. Dad was thinking another franchise, but Trey, who was selling
real estate at the time, wanted to do something completely new.
So, they turned to the stack of papers — magazine articles,
newspaper clippings, and the like — that the elder Jordan had
collected over the years. Trey Jordan estimates the pile was two-feet
high, and with a bit of digging, the pair discovered that not only did
Honeybaked Ham do brisk business in the region, it had no
competition.
The pair toured franchises and mom-and-pops and decided they could
do it.
The first Holiday Ham opened in 1993, and now there are has six
stores in the Memphis area and in Knoxville.
Trey Jordan says the aim in competing with HoneyBaked was
product-based only in part. “The secret sauce for us, so to speak, was
customer service, above and beyond. We were okay with selling less
product as long as we treated people well,” he says.
“Mom said make everyday a holiday,” Jordan explains of the business’
name and philosophy. “She would use any excuse to have an event —
you brought home an ‘A’ in school, came home from college — and
she’d go overboard.”
These family get-togethers were often picnics that included chicken
and potato salads and, what’s become one of Holiday Ham’s signature
items, pimento cheese.
Eighty-thousand pounds of “Papa’s Famous Pimento Cheese” were sold
last year, and in Knoxville, Holiday Ham has another moniker: Pimento’s
Café & Market.
You can get pimento cheese on a sandwich or by the pound, and
Holiday Ham recently added pimento cheese grits to its breakfast
menu.
The recipe for the pimento cheese is top-secret, of course, and the
Jordans have learned there’s no point in messing with it. That’s to
say, the blue-cheese-and-carrot version was a flop.
The blue-cheese pimento salad was an example of the Jordans actively
tweaking their business model. A year ago, they added a breakfast menu.
“None of us believed in breakfast,” Jordan says. “There was a real
push-back.” He estimates that breakfast now constitutes about 10
percent of the business.
As for the ham, which is from a smokehouse in Ohio, Jordan says its
sales make up about 20 percent of business. “Our ham is awesome,” he
says.
One of Holiday’s newest offerings is the “pack-your-own” cooler,
which serves two to four or four to six. The to-go coolers include a
choice of salads (chicken, pimento), half a loaf of bread, a side of
fresh fruit, and cookies.
In the fall, the company will introduce pasta salads and recently
held “preview tastings” for new shrimp and chicken salads. (Customers
volunteer for the “previews” through the company’s website.)
Holiday Ham has roughly 180 employees, who are pushed with contests
offering prizes such as tickets to Six Flags. When one East Memphis
store wasn’t having much success with its curb-side service (you call
in an order; they deliver it to your car in specially marked parking
spaces), the Union Avenue store manager made it her goal to make the
service work in Midtown. She met the goal.
“We all pull together,” Jordan says. “We’re still just a mom-and-pop
operation.”
Jordan points out the black-and-white pictures on the walls. There’s
one of his daughters, another featuring his college roommate who’s an
anchor on ESPN. There’s one, of course, taken during one of those
family picnics that inspired the business.
“We call ourselves a non-alcoholic Cheers — everybody
knows your name,” Jordan says, explaining why Holiday Ham has so far
resisted franchising. “We’re scared we’ll lose that culture.”
Ultimately, Jordan says, the goal is to spread the Holiday Ham brand
across the state. “We want to become a household name in
Tennessee.”