Oh Grate! Tropical Dressing was a hit at the recent Super Bowl gathering at the home of Amy Bingham, who, along with Courtney Jones, owns Oh Grate!, a food business in Collierville.
That night they used about eight ounces of Tropical Dressing — aka “green sauce” — that comes in a 16-ounce jar, says Jones, who created the dressing. They used it with barbecue nachos, but, she says, “the fellas” were “continually dipping their chips straight in the container, breaking all of Amy’s rules.”
Jones began making her Tropical Dressing after she got tired of the grocery store continuously running out of Pancho’s green sauce. “I started making it years ago at home off the copycat recipe everybody has been sharing online,” she says. But she changed the recipe after she and Bingham moved into their first commercial kitchen. “That’s where I learned it could certainly be improved upon with better techniques and ingredients.”
About five years ago, Jones and Bingham opened Oh Grate! as a “frozen meal business to help busy families get dinner on the table.”
For about three and a half years, they worked out of the kitchen at Crossings Church in Bartlett. Then, about a year and a half ago, they opened their Oh Grate! storefront at 2028 West Poplar Avenue Suite 104 in Collierville.
They began selling their Tropical Dressing last October. “But it didn’t take off until January,” Bingham says. “I think it was clouded by our holiday food.”
But about four or five weeks ago, their green sauce sales exploded. “The Tropical Dressing just went viral,” Bingham says, adding, “Someone posted it on Facebook and it kept getting shares.”
She believes the snow in late January had something to do with it. People were stocking up because they knew they were going to be snowed in.
“A lot of the secret lies in the process, meaning the equipment we use,” Jones says. Theirs has “slightly different ingredients. I don’t know how Pancho’s made it, but the quality of our product, I personally feel, is better.”
The Tropical Dressing also has a nostalgic factor, Bingham says. “More the nostalgia of, ‘Hey, I used to eat this at Pancho’s. And you people have made this exactly like theirs or better.’ It’s bringing back memories even for me. My mom always had green sauce in the fridge and we had that on taco night.
“It’s a Memphis memory. And bringing people back to that. If you’re from Memphis, you know it.”
Their Tropical Dressing, as well as their sausage and chicken biscuits, chicken spaghetti, vegetable soup, and other frozen food products, also are available at various locations, including select Superlo Foods locations, Cordelia’s Market, and High Point Grocery in Memphis; Commerce Street Market in Hernando, Mississippi; and Naifeh’s Cash Saver in Covington, Tennessee.
Jones, who does the cooking, used to have “a little hole-in-the-wall barbecue business” called Plumpy’s BBQ in Arlington. She made meals for her family and froze them because she was working at the restaurant. Then her husband said, “Why don’t you sell these meals to more people?”
“I thought about it and thought about it and it made sense,” Jones says. She asked Bingham to help her. “I needed someone to handle the paperwork side.”
Bingham liked the idea: “The concept of the business model, to me, was brilliant. We really started this to help families, like mine, who are just running from place to place and still like to have a good homemade meal at home.”
They also wanted the dinners not to be costly. “This shouldn’t have to be a luxury item. This is something we want people to be able to afford. And make it okay for them to not have to whip up a home-cooked meal and do dishes every night.”
Jones came up with the name. Or, rather, her son Axel did. A picky eater, Axel used to say “great” when he found out what they were having for dinner. Meaning, “Great. I’m not happy about that.” Or “Great. This is awesome. I can’t wait to eat this tonight.”
Axel, who is now 14, is “a little more polite” about what he says when it comes to what they’re having for dinner, Jones says.
They spelled “great” the way the “grater” utensil used for grating cheese and vegetables is spelled. To put a kitchen spin on their brand name, Jones says.
